Mit Blut und Eisen : With Blood and Iron
by Dyranum
Summary: It is the year 1955 and the Soviet War is nearly at an end. However, a new era of exploration looms on the horizon. An era which will cast these events into obscurity. But nevertheless, the greatest decisions shall still be decided through Blood and Iron.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Notes:**_ Well, new fic. This fic is partly based on the results of a game of Victoria 2, so expect some Victoria 2-logic. If you don't know what V-2 is, then here's a quick, simplified summary: Grand political "simulator" of the Victorian Age._

_Also, please note that despite the fact that many of the characters or militaries may not be English, I will still utilise English ranks to make it easier for you – the reader – to quickly understand. However, there might be some untranslated terms, which remain untranslated for a variety of reasons. In this chapter, it is simply because I can not find a real equivalent in English (and rule of cool of course)._

_Here are the untranslated terms in this chapter: Thema (pl. Themata) can be roughly translated as a province. Tends to be called "Theme" in English._

_Tagma (pl. Tagmata) is a sort of army unit. For the purposes of this fic, (due to in-universe reasons) a Tagma is a special sort of "army"._

**Disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect.**

**Claimer: I do own my Original Creations (OCs).**

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><p><strong>Chapter 1: The Soviet War<strong>

_"Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided – but by Blood and Iron." - Otto von Bismarck_

It is the summer of 1955. Antonios Stavridis – along with the rest of his squad – was sitting on a hard seat in the troop compartment of an APC as it drove across the Russian steppe. Driving alongside the APC was the rest of the Opsician Tagma, hailing from the Thema of Opsikion far away in Anatolia. The Opsician Tagma was – like most other modern Roman military units – based on the practice of combined arms. It included both Mechanized as well as Infantry elements. While generally, some parts of some Tagmatas were more famous than the others, this was not the case with the Opsician Tagma.

Currently, the Opsician Tagma was making its way to the Soviet city of Stalingrad which had resisted a number of past assaults, being at one point almost captured before Soviet reinforcements forced a Roman retreat. However, that did not sully the mood of the squad in the APC. Antonios himself was just as eager as the rest of the squad to take on the city and its stubborn Soviet defenders.

Antonios hailed from a soldier family settled in the Opsikion Thema, and thus also a part of the Opsician Tagma. His Tagma had participated on the western front, far away in Hungary, during the Second World War in 1944. A year before the end of the war in the west, his Tagma had been transferred to the Soviet theater, in which they'd been fighting ever since. It had mostly been a back-and-forth battle - land constantly changing hands - with Roman forces slowly gaining control of the Northern Caucasus. It was only now in the recent months that they'd had a real breakthrough, securing vast swathes of Soviet territory. Though that did not count for the armies on the Ukrainian front. They had managed to secure the whole Ukrainian coast in addition to the peninsula of Crimea from the Soviets far earlier. What had been surprising was the willingness of the local population to both aid and fight for the Romans.

The voice of the squad's leader, Tsolakoglou, suddenly sounded throughout the APC. "Men, as you're all aware, we are heading towards Stalingrad", he said. He had turned around from his seat up front and was looking at the rest of the squad. "We're advancing on the city from the bottom and up. We'll be operating and securing in the southern half. Now, don't expect as fierce resistance as you've been hearing of, the Soviets have been in disarray these last few months. The brass thinks that they're on the edge of collapsing. Before any of you ask, the majority of the Soviet forces in the city are stationed up north, which will be taken on by the Anatolikon and Armeniakon Tagmatas". Tsolakoglou turned back around to face the front of the vehicle.

As they continued on towards the city, Antonios did a quick check of his weapons. For this operation, he would not be using his trustworthy rifle which he had used in the Caucasus and on the Russian steppe. Instead, his main weapon would be a Sub-Machine Gun. Fighting in German and Austrian cities had revealed the advantages of SMGs in urban warfare. He would also be carrying a number of grenades, in addition to a pistol.

After some time, the city of Stalingrad could be seen approaching on the horizon. It looked like it had endured a lot. At this distance, Antonios could see the standard dull gray Soviet architecture of the structures decorated with gaping holes. To the far left, there were a few structures which had completely collapsed. To the right of the congregation of war-torn structures, a river could be seen flowing. The Volga river.

The APC stopped around one to two kilometres short of the city. The rest of the Opsician Tagma did the same. This took Antonios by surprise as he did not know why they had stopped. He turned to the soldier sitting to his left and asked, "Why did we stop".

The soldier to his left – a turkish man – turned to face Antonios. He said, with a slight accent, "The Artillery is going to bombard the city to wipe out the frontier defences. It'll make our job much easier".

Antonios simply nodded, and the turkish man shifted his gaze back to the front, not really looking at anything in particular. The man was called Mehmet, and Antonios knew him well. Back in the Opsikion Thema, they were neighbours and as they were a part of the same squad, they had had a lot of interaction when in military service as well.

Small vibrations could be felt throughout the vehicle and the dull thuds of the Artillery cannons could be heard. Several salvos were loosened, each striking down somewhere among the myriad of structures ahead. The exact effects could not be seen from this distance, not with the naked eye. However, Antonios knew very well what Artillery fire could do to an area. He had himself been subjected to Soviet Artillery fire a few months before. Thankfully for him, the Imperial Air Force had been able to eliminate the hostile Artillery. He doubted that the Soviets currently in the city would have such luck, as the Soviet air force had been decimated by this point in the war.

After several salvos, the Artillery cannons quietened down. The whole Tagma immediately rushed into action, quickly advancing across the remaining distance. Antonios readied his SMG and prepared to disembark on a moment's notice. A few scattered bursts of gunfire pinged off of the armour of the APC as it came up to the side of a structure. "Dismount!", said Tsolakoglou. They did so in an orderly manner. As the doors to the APC were opened, one could hear the sound of SMGs firing not far away. Antonios jumped out right after Mehmet. His boots made contact with the cracked pavement.

Antonios brought up his SMG, but almost immediately thereafter the gunfire quietened down. They advanced towards the right corner of the structure that they had parked in front of to find a few Roman squads standing in front of a dead squad of Soviet troops with their weapons at the ready. Tsolakoglou made a signal for them to stop before they could round the corner. Shortly thereafter, the report of several sniper rifles could be heard. Several of the Roman soldiers who had taken down the Soviet squad fell limply down to the ground. The rest of the Roman squads in the open hastily made to get out of the line of fire of the Soviet Snipers.

Antonios looked around, to notice that Tsolakoglou had gone back to the APC. He assumed that it was to use the radio of the vehicle. This assumption was confirmed correct when Tsolakoglou walked back to the squad and gestured to the squad sniper. "Özgür, the brass wants you in this building. Take out those Snipers".

"Yes, Sir", said Özgür and went to the closest entrance, which was close to the left corner of the building. The Roman sniper forced open the torn door and disappeared into the building. Antonios turned his gaze to the structure straight across, to see several machine guns being brought up. The sound of tank engines could be heard as well. Antonios looked to the right, to see several light tanks driving into the city. "Go, go, go!", said Tsolakoglou, and they all rushed around the corner with their weapons at the ready. The street which lay right in front of them - on the end which they were at - was being filled with Roman forces. A bit farther down the street though, Soviet troops could be seen emerging from the structures. Some stayed inside the structures, opting to peeking out of and firing down on the Romans from the windows.

The sound of machine guns could be heard as battle was joined. The sound of Sniper rifles could be heard, the Roman ones mostly eliminating those Soviets firing out from the structures, and their Soviet counterparts doing the same. Though a few sniper shots struck the soldiers battling it out on the street as well. Antonios rushed behind the husk of a ruined car, a few shots from the Soviets barely missing him. Not long thereafter, he was joined by Mehmet. The loud report of a tank cannon could suddenly be heard above the buzz of machine guns, SMGs and sniper rifles. It came from a Roman light tank which had rolled up and positioned itself in the middle of the street, serving as both additional firepower and cover for Roman infantry. Antonios and Mehmet paid the tank no notice though, preferring to focus on those trying to kill them. They simultaneously rose up above the car and let off a few bursts from their SMGs before ducking back down again.

Antonios had his back pressed against the car, sitting down so as to not present a target. He looked to his left, to see a Roman soldier rise up from behind some piece of junk which vaguely looked like it had once been some sort of cart. The Roman soldier let off a burst from his SMG before he caught a shot in the chest and fell backwards down onto the ruined road. The report of the tank cannon could be heard again. Antonios looked to his right to see Mehmet rise up to fire off a few more bursts from his SMG.

Antonios stood up again and fired his SMG in short bursts. He could see Soviet troops using whatever wreckage they could come across as cover from the onslaught of the Roman force. A Soviet soldier fell down dead to the ground from a burst from Antonios's SMG. Antonios dropped down behind the car along with Mehmet. As he was doing so, he could see a squad of Roman troops on the other side of the street (which was to his left when sitting with his back against the car) rush to a structure a few metres down. Sniper shots flew down from the structure, wounding several of them and felling one of the soldiers advancing onto the building.

However, in spite of that, most of that squad succeeded in entering the structure. It was apparent that they were successful in securing the structure itself as the Sniper fire coming from the building ceased not too long thereafter. As Antonios dispatched another Soviet trooper and ducked down behind the ruined car, he could hear a familiar voice not too far away. Antonios shifted his gaze to locate its originator. It was their squad leader. "Get ready! We're going to storm the building straight ahead", said Tsolakoglou. Antonios nodded and relayed that to Mehmet once the turkish man had ducked down behind the ruined car too. Mehmet simply nodded. They waited behind the ruined car for a signal from their squad leader.

As soon as it came, their whole squad – minus their sniper – acted as one, rising up and rushing to the entrance of the structure a couple of metres in front of them. Antonios hefted his SMG, and went after Mehmet. He went past the ruined car from the left, as that was closest to the wall of another structure. The suppressive fire from the Roman position allowed Antonios and his squad to rush across the ruined pavement of the city and up to the cubic structure in front almost unscathed.

Mehmet, who had taken point, stood to the left of the entrance - a ruined glass door - with his SMG at the ready when Antonios came up to him. As the rest of the squad arrived and they all took up position along the sides of the entrance of the structure, he said, "They're bunkered down. Soviet troops are all over the ground floor".

Tsolakoglou, who stood beside Mehmet, nodded. "We'll just have to flush them out", he said. "Antonios, Mehmet, Bogdan. Grenades, on the count of three". They all nodded and readied grenades. When their squad leader reached the number three, they threw the grenades in unison. Three grenades flew into the structure. Surprised cries in what was probably Russian could be heard, silenced shortly thereafter by the detonation of the grenades.

Mehmet took point and rushed in, followed by the rest of the squad. Soviet troops lay scattered across the whole room, a few of them wounded from the grenades. Antonios fired off a burst from his SMG at a wounded Soviet trooper to his right who was aiming a pistol at him and supporting himself with a nearby piece of wall. The soviet fell limply down to the ground as Antonios shifted his aim to new targets. The sound of SMG fire was heard throughout the room as the Soviet troops were all swiftly dispatched by the squad.

With the ground floor secure, they advanced up the stairs on the left side of the room. Nikolaos took point this time, with Mehmet and Antonios not far behind. They arrived up on the second level in a dull and featureless corridor. On the side of the stairs which they had just used was another staircase, which led up to the third level. The corridor itself had a multitude of doors, each leading to separate rooms. Sniper shots could periodically be heard on this level and from up above, barely audible over the louder sounds from outside. There was a map of the building in front of them, which told them everything they needed to know about the structure. It also allowed them to figure out where the snipers would likely be.

Antonios and Mehmet went to the far right end of the corridor and through a door to emerge into a corridor which went along the side of the building. It had multiple windows, perfect vantage points for a Sniper. Antonios had point. He looked to his left, seeing the corridor continue down and vanish around the corner at the end. He then looked to his right, to see the corridor continue onwards and disappear around another corner. He also spotted the corpse of a Soviet Sniper a few metres away, lying underneath a window with missing glass.

The Sniper shots could be heard coming from the right end of the corridor, so Antonios and Mehmet went down it, ignoring the Soviet corpse. Through the windows on the side, one could see the Soviet position slowly falter under the heavy fire from the Roman forces. Off in the distance, one could also spot Roman forces advancing deeper into the scarred city. Antonios brought up his SMG as he rounded the corner and opened fire on the soviet sniper who ended up right in front of him. Mehmet added his fire as well, allowing them to quickly take out the soviet before he had the chance to respond. There were two more snipers off in the distance. The closest of them attempted to get away by entering into one of the many apartments which lined the corridor.

The sniper did not have the time though, and was cut down under the concentrated fire from Antonios and Mehmet. The sniper at the end of the corridor had managed to bring out his own SMG, before a gunshot went through the open window and into the cranium of the soviet. The Russian man fell limply down to the ground. Antonios and Mehmet ducked down beneath the windows to avoid any potential friendly fire. They advanced down the corridor in this crouched state, checking each apartment on the way. Ignoring the recently deceased corpse at the end of the corridor, they rounded the corner to come face to face with Bogdan, Nikolaos and Tsolakoglou who had taken the other way.

"Man, you guys really scared me there", said Nikolaos jokingly with a smile plastered onto his face as he brought down his SMG. "This is no place to be joking", said Mehmet as both he and Antonios straightened up. "We just saw a soviet get sniped". Tsolakoglou was in agreement, and they all walked back to the room that the trio had come from. There were a few dead soviets there. Two Snipers, and two normal troopers. Not wasting any time, they went back to the initial corridor, up the stairs and to the third level.

Coming up on the third level, they saw that its layout was identical to the second level. However, this was not surprising to any of them as they had all fought in other soviet cities before this one and were familiar with soviet architecture. After having cleared the third and topmost level of Soviet snipers, they all went back down the staircase to the ground floor.

Coming down to the more open ground floor, they saw the rest of the squad – which had been left behind to guard against Soviet counterattacks – standing around and not doing anything in particular. As the five of them walked down the steps, the four squad members on the ground floor threw quick glances at them before going back to watching their separate sides of the structure.

Now back on the ground floor, Antonios threw away an empty clip from his SMG and put in a new one. As he did so, he surveyed the battle outside. The Soviet line was still there, but less and less gunfire was coming from it. The Roman line did not advance though. Looking back to the room that they were in, Antonios saw Tsolakoglou standing beside Stavros, who was responsible for handling their communications equipment. The squad leader was using the radio equipment, probably to radio in their progress to the commander of the Tagma.

After a short moment, Tsolakoglou walked away from Stavros and to a more central location in the part of the room that most of the squad was in. "Men, brass wants us to hold this house", he said. "Our main force is going to advance and break that soviet line."

"So we're just going to sit here doing nothing?", said Bogdan.

Tsolakoglous nodded and said, "Pretty much. Unless some soviet is dumb enough to try and take us on".

Bogdan sighed, but didn't say anything, preferring instead to survey the crumbling Soviet line. The Roman force had decided to uproot and were fast approaching. The soviets on the other hand were making a hasty retreat. It didn't take long before Roman infantry and light tanks rolled past the apartment building that the squad was in. They all dispersed throughout the building, mostly in pairs. Tsolakoglou and Stavros went up to the third level, Mehmet and Bogdan to the second level, and the rest stayed on the ground floor. Antonios was in the main room of the ground floor, which contained the stairs upwards and the wrecked glass door. With him was Nikolaos. Antonios was leaning against a wall, with his SMG in his hands. He threw a glance to the left and outwards, through the shattered glass door which they had entered through. There was a person approaching. However, Antonios was not alarmed as he could see that the person was clad in a Roman uniform.

As the person came closer, Antonios recognised him as Özgür. The squad's sniper pushed open the ruined glass door and entered the structure. "Out of targets, Özgür?", said Nikolaos from across the room, to Antonios's right. Özgür – who was on his left – answered with a humourless, "Ha. Ha". Footsteps could be heard from the stairs, right in front of Antonios. Shortly thereafter, Tsolakoglou came into view, with Stavros, Mehmet and Bogdan following soon after. As he walked towards the trio, he nodded at Özgür. The sniper wasted no time and said, "Orders from brass. We're to move out".

"Where, exactly?", said Tsolakoglou.

"We're to reinforce forces at some soviet-held market. Reds've bunkered it down", said Özgür.

Tsolakoglou nodded, and said, "Alright, let's move out". They regrouped before heading out, following after Özgür who had been informed of the exact location of the market. On the way there, they passed by many apartment buildings, which were all virtually identical except for the exact amount of and location of damage suffered. They did not encounter any living soviet soldiers. In fact, it was all rather abandoned, although there were the odd Roman squads stationed at key structures. After some time, Nikolaos said, "You know, I wonder where everybody's at. There've been awfully few Soviets around. Are the Reds out on a picknick or something?"

One could hear a sigh escape Tsolakoglou. "I've already said why. Most of the soviets are up North, now shut your trap and keep on the alert", he said. Nikolaos did so, and they wordlessly continued onwards toward the market. Gunfire and rumbles could be heard in the distance, with the loudness of it increasing as they neared their destination. Finally, after some time, they came upon the market and a fierce battle. Roman troops were present all around the structure, firing in at the soviets. However, the superior defensive position of the soviet troops allowed them to deal out much more damage than they took.

The squad came up to what appeared to be the commander of the Roman forces, standing out of the line of fire behind a gray square-ish structure. He was a scarred man with worn glasses and a face which looked quite old. After Tsolakoglou had given him the name of the squad, the Commander nodded, "I requested additional squads. You're the last one to arrive. We're going to attempt to break the Soviet hold on that market over there. We've got a simple plan down on how to do it: Blow a hole at the blind-spot of the structure, which is down over at that end. After that, it will just be a matter of pouring in soldiers into the opening. These Soviets have remarkably poor armour". All of this was accompanied by gestures. The blind spot of the market was down on the left end of the structure.

The market itself was a gray rectangular block with windows everywhere on the side of the wall which could be seen from the squad's current line of sight. Soviet troops could be seen firing out of the windows, which either lacked glass or had pieces of glass in them. A few times, a Soviet soldier firing out from a window dropped to the ground from Roman fire, though that was mostly sniper fire. The regular Roman troops did not provide much else other than suppressive fire. Roman troops dropped more often than their Soviet counterparts, though many times only temporarily due to wounds.

At the Commander's mention of explosions, Antonios thought he saw a smile spreading across Bogdan's face before it quickly disappeared. Although given that it was Bogdan, that was not especially surprising. It was as surprising as him being their explosives expert, which is to say: not at all.

The Commander began speaking again, "You'll be part of the assault forces. They're currently down on the rectangle's left end and setting up explosives. Make your way down there immediately. You can avoid Soviet fire by just going to the right of those blocks over there". He made a gesture to his left, where a small street ran beside the building he was using for cover. This street was lined with structures in the classic block-ish Soviet style. There were only a few places which might be dangerous to cross, but considering the fact that the Soviet garrison in the market was occupied with the suppressive force, it would probably not be of much concern.

Antonios walked up to the left side along with Mehmet, and peeked out. The street was completely abandoned. Not a living thing in sight. On the other hand, there were a few dead things, including not only a few corpses but also some broken down machines. Footsteps could be heard behind them, boots on pavement. Tsolakoglou came up beside them. He took a peek down the street as well. "Well, it doesn't seem like there's anyone there", he said, then turned and gave a nod to Antonios who subsequently set off in a sprint. The rest of the squad followed soon thereafter.

Antonios ran down the street, throwing a few glimpses to his right, through the side paths. There were a few windows on the market which could be used to fire on them, but their Soviet occupants were focused on the threat in front of them. So, Antonios and the rest of the squad arrived at the end of the street and took a right to come up in front of the market's left wall. There were a few squads there already, with demolitions specialists setting up explosives. As the rest of the squad also stopped from their sprint, their explosives specialist – Bogdan – joined the other demolitioners in setting up the explosives.

It took a few minutes, but after some time, they were all set to demolish the wall. All of the squads present were ordered to back off, and once they were at a safe distance and behind adequate cover, one of the demolitions specialists detonated the explosives. A large explosion of yellow and red erupted at the base of the wall and quickly engulfed most of it. Shattered pieces of concrete flew in all directions. Once the smoke had cleared, a rudimentary hole had been formed. Metal rods protruded out from the concrete, serving to diminish the size of the opening. However, it was still large enough to fit about three persons.

A squad off to Antonios's left, which had taken cover behind a few wrecked automobiles, rose up from behind their cover and charged towards and through the opening. They were followed by another squad. Tsolakoglou gave the order to charge, and Antonios did so, charging out of the ruined flat which they had been in. Antonios and Nikolaos went through the opening side-by-side. They emerged into what looked like an unfinished section of the market. The walls were unadorned and mostly just dull gray with splotches of white. There were a few shelves at places, with vaguely green-brown boxes on them. There were also a few spots of white paint on the floor in places, but most of the paint consisted of the white patches on the walls. There existed a few exits from the room. The most obvious one were the white-ish double-doors right in front of them, which had been opened by the squads which had entered before them. The double-doors led out into a short corridor, which then split into two paths. However, there was to the left also a rather broad metallic staircase, and on the wall to Antonios's right there was a small, brown, wooden door. "Well, this structure sure isn't going to see much use. Bet we really pissed off the Sovs with this nice little ventilation shaft", said Nikolaos from Antonios's left whilst gesturing backwards at the opening they had created.

"Nikolaos, take point", said the voice of Tsolakoglou from the left and behind them, "We're taking the steps". Nikolaos nodded, readied his SMG and went up the stairs. Tsolakoglou made a gesture to Antonios, signalling him to follow after. Antonios did so, moving up the metallic steps. He came up to a platform, turned to the left and moved up another series of steps. Nikolaos was already on the next platform, and moving up the last series of steps which connected with a broad platform which had a rather wide brown-ish door over on the other side of it. It looked quite odd actually, which wasn't helped by the fact that the door possessed two gaping rectangular holes, obviously meant for glass.

Antonios landed up on the platform as Nikolaos stood to the left of the door at the end. Nikolaos brought up his SMG, and then took a quick step to come in front of the door, which he aimed his SMG at, searching for targets. He didn't appear to find any, but he nevertheles continued to look for them. As Antonios was approaching rather casually, Nikolaos stood vigilant.

Nikolaos casted a glance back at Antonios as the rest of the squad began coming up the last of the steps as well. However, just as he did so, Antonios saw a Soviet soldier suddenly appear behind Nikolaos. "Get down!", shouted Antonios, but it was too late, the Soviet soldier fired off the weapon in his hands which looked like an old trench shotgun from the First World War. The effect was instant, Nikolaos received a shotgun shell to the back of his head and fell limply down to the ground, face first.

Antonios opened fire on the soviet trooper with his SMG. The Soviet moved out of the way of his shots, getting out from in front of the hollow door and behind a wall to the left. Most of Antonios's shots missed, though judging from the sounds emitted by the Russian, a few of them had hit their target. By now, the rest of the squad had caught up with Antonios. He let out a swear at his inability to fell the killer of Nikolaos. Tsolakoglou gave him a nod, then turned to the rest of the squad. "Prep grenades", he said. The squad complied, and they each pulled out one grenade. "On my mark. Özgür, Mehmet, you take the left. Antonios, Bogdan, you take the right. The rest of you, in front and wherever else", said Tsolakoglou. While that normally wouldn't work in such a cramped space, the unusually wide door made it possible.

Antonios pulled out his grenade and walked up on the right side of the door, touching the wall with his right arm. Right in front of him, at the left wall, Mehmet did the same. As soon as they were ready, Tsolakoglou gave the signal. Antonios pulled the pin, went up to the door and threw his grenade, then retreated to make way for the others. Mehmet did the same. Soon enough, explosions started going off in the room on the other side of the door and immediately after they ceased, Tsolakoglou signalled them to attack.

Mehmet and Antonios took point, rushing through the wide door and into what looked like a shop under construction with their SMGs held up high. The others piled in after them, going two by two. There was a column several metres in front of them, but the rest of the area was rather open, with shelves filled with various commodities lining the many walls. Antonios turned to the right, while Mehmet turned to the left. He nearly immediately spotted a dazed Soviet trooper attempting to get up, with his rifle lying not far away. Antonios fired off a burst from his SMG at the Soviet, then yet another when the first burst failed to kill the hostile. The sound of gunfire could be heard throughout the whole unfinished shop as the Roman squad opened fire with their SMGs. The Soviet soldiers in the room were not given a chance to recover and regroup and were all either incapacitated or killed.

As Bogdan took care of the last Soviet threat in the room, Antonios spotted a soldier outside the shop taking aim with what looked like an old rifle from the first world war. Antonios pressed down on the trigger just as the Soviet trooper did the same. A round flew out from the Soviet's rifle, followed shortly thereafter by a curse from Bogdan. Antonios managed to take out the hostile before it could do any more damage with one or two SMG bursts.

With the whole shop cleared out, Tsolakoglou ordered them to hold it for Roman reinforcements. They did so, guarding the entrances to the shop which constituted the whole front part which was unfinished and completely exposed with the exception of a low wall. Additionally, there was also a small wooden door to the left of the front part of the shop and opposite the unusually wide door which the squad had entered through. There were shelves and boxes everywhere, the latter providing some form of cover though hardly adequate. So, they all bunkered down behind the front wall, the middle of which was open and looked like it was supposed to fit a door.

Throughout the rest of the battle, they were going to hold this position. Roman troops occasionally came through their position, and their Soviet counterparts made several attempts at retaking the unfinished shop, but in the end, Roman forces managed to best them and secure the whole market. However, this did not come without losses as the Soviets fought tooth and nail and made the life for the Roman soldiers decidedly difficult.

After some time, Tsolakoglou came up to the rest of the squad and said, "Men, we've taken the market", there were some cheers, "However, we'll be part of the forces garrisoning this structure so we will not be heading north". Nobody said anything in reponse to that, but it was obvious that there were a few who were disappointed with that fact.

"How does our situation look?", said Antonios. He suspected that Soviet resistance was crumbling, judging from what they had encountered in this part of the city.

"Really good", said Tsolakoglou, "Brass thinks we'll be able to secure the whole city within a day or two". That was surprising to Antonios. Normally, securing Soviet cities took at least a week, and often more than that. The current situation of the Soviet Union really did show. After over a decade of fighting, it was coming apart at the seams. Antonios was really eager for the war to end. Campaigning for such a long time did that to people.

Nevertheless, the war was still on. Tsolakoglou distributed them across the structure on patrols in pairs, with a few ordered to guard the gaping hole which they had torn open in order to enter the building. Bogdan would be staying at the shop though, still recovering from the near-fatal shot.

Antonios and Mehmet were walking down a corridor. It was torn from the fighting and there lay a few Soviet corpses, but otherwise it was rather dull, like all Soviet architecture that one tend to encounter. "I wonder what the Reds are doing", said Antonios, breaking the uncomfortable silence. "I mean, wouldn't they have tried something by now?"

Mehmet looked at him and said, "Don't think so, they've got few troops in the area".

"What makes you say that?", said Antonios.

Mehmet's reply was swift. "The lack of resistance", he said.

"Yeah, well, those Soviets are crafty", said Antonios."Remember Stavropol?"

Mehmet nodded, "Alright, I'll give you that one". Antonios glanced out of the nearby window, which was on his right. Its glass had been shattered a long time ago, probably during the prior – failed, he mentally added – attempts to take the city. The area outside was a mess, but also pretty much abandoned. Remnants of the Roman effort to capture the structure that they were now guarding were strewn all over the front of the market. Abandoned cars with bullet holes angled on the side to form make-shift cover, bullet casings on the ground, among other things. Any corpses resulting from the battle had been taken away though.

"What is it?", said Mehmet after a moment. Antonios studied the outside, but eventually decided that his assumption had been false. He tured away from the window and said, "Nothing, just thought I saw something moving".

They continued down the corridor. However, it didn't take long before a voice could be heard shouting in the market. "Soviet forces are inside the market! All Roman soldiers, report to the ground floor", it said.

Mehmet and Antonios exchanged glances, before setting off down the corridor, then taking a turn to the left to go down the steps to the ground floor. Arriving down on the ground floor, which was made out of stone, they heard gunfire not far from there, in the direction of the steps which led to the basement.

They rushed across the stone floor and arrived some 20-30 metres from the basement entrance without incident. They could see Roman and Soviet troops battling it out, the Soviets having superior positioning behind multiple metallic boxes and several support columns. However, the Roman troops were not in that bad of a situation either, even if it was much worse than the Soviet one. Antonios and Mehmet both opened fire at the Soviets with their SMGs, taking the Soviet troops by suprise as they were focused on the Roman troops right in front of them, which all were to Antonios's left.

Antonios fired off a burst with his SMG and then pulled out and primed a grenade. He threw it at the Soviet position, where it landed and exploded. It did not cause any casualties to the Soviet troops, only forcing them to scatter. However, that was all the Romans needed to gain the upper hand. Soon enough, the Soviet troops were all either killed or incapacitated; mostly incapacitated. Antonios, along with Mehmet and several other soldiers, went down into the basement. What they found was quite surprising. A small tunnel - accessed from a trap door that looked like a piece of floor - which led out of the structure to somewhere. It was obvious that the Soviets had used it to infiltrate the building.

Tsolakoglou came in after they had secured the basement. After they had informed him of their findings he said, "Tunnel, eh? Crafty bastards". He gave them a nod, "I've received word that we will all be heading back to the Opsikion Thema soon. Brass expects a Soviet surrender to come quite shortly". This was followed by collective cheers from the men present.

* * *

><p><em>Codex: History of the (Eastern) Roman Empire: Modern Era: The history of the Eastern Roman Empire is a long one and fraught with conflict. Throughout its history it has always been called the Roman Empire by its inhabitants and direct neighbours. However, it is only the eastern remaining half of the Roman Empire and thus it has come to be called the Eastern Roman Empire in historical documents such as these to prevent confusion. Though there was never any interruption between the Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire, it is generally agreed that its establishment was when the Roman Empire was permanently split into a western and an eastern half in 395 AD.<em>

_The Eastern Roman Empire had its periods of success and decline. However, after the sacking of Constantinople in 1204 by the Fourth Crusade, it entered a period of what many see as permanent decline. It was during this time that the Ottoman Empire was beginning to emerge as the dominant power in the Balkans and Anatolia. Constantinople, the last area under the authority of the weakened Eastern Roman Empire, fell to the Ottoman armies in 1453. However, Roman splinter states survived and outlived the fall of Constantinople. Most of these were annexed by the Ottomans, except for one. The Despotate of Epirus managed to strike a deal with the Ottomans which would ensure the survival of the Despotate and Roman authority. The Epirotes were content with rebuilding and plotting under Ottoman vassalship._

_Eventually, the Epirotes saw their chance to break free from the Ottoman yoke. By the start of the 19th century, the Ottoman vassalship was only nominal. Epirus was effectively independent. In 1814, the Despotate of Epirus created and funded a secret organisation aimed at reasserting Roman ("Greek") independence._

_In 1821, these efforts came to fruition with the start of the Hellenic War of Independence. The declaration of Roman Independence by the leader of the revolt began with the by-now famous phrase: "The time has come, O men, Romans" (Note: this is commonly shortened to: "The time has come, O Romans"). The revolt was incredibly well-organised, and though the Despotate never did claim responsibility for starting it, it was obvious to anyone involved who was actually the leader and instigator of it. The Ottoman Sultan was furious at this betrayal._

_The exact events of the War of Independence will not be covered in this entry. For more reading, See: Hellenic War of Independence._

_While the War of Independence was not filled with success for the Roman side, it was nevertheless successful (with outside help) in freeing a large part of the Hellenic peninsula from the Ottoman yoke. In the aftermath of the revolt, Epirus expanded greatly to include the Peloponnese, Attica, Central Hellas and parts of Thessaly in addition to its core lands of North and South Epirus. The Despot of Epirus proclaimed himself Emperor of Epirus and All Hellas, but the country was still referred to as Epirus by the outside world (though sometimes "Greece" as well), despite the fact that by this point, it encompassed far more than simply Epirus._

_After this successful assertion of independence, the Epirotes entered a period of extensive build-up of military and economy. Education was another prioritised area, with vast reforms to the school system aimed at eventually allowing every Roman citizen to be literate and well-educated. This only bore fruit more than half a century later, not in the least because he military was of a much higher priority. Despite being in decline, the Ottoman Empire was still a very strong power militarily and probably both could and would smash Epirus if it weren't for the protection afforded to the Epirotes by the great powers._

_By the end of the Epirote military expansions, the total strength of the various armies of Epirus numbered some 60,000 men. The Ottoman Empire's military was slightly more than twice as large. The effects of this dramatic military expansion can be seen even today. Some of the themes based around the territory of Epirus at that time have over 7% of its population in the military, though as soldiers are resettled to new areas that number is steadily decreasing._

_This relatively huge army was enough to dissuade Ottoman attacks, but it was not enough to take on the Ottomans in a fair fight. That is why the First of the Epirus-Ottoman Wars started while the Ottomans were already at war with the much more threatening Russia. Before that, however, Epirus had practiced its military in colonial conquests against Dahomey and Egypt. The small Nigerian state of Dahomey was annexed to Epirus to serve as a naval port._

_Egypt was a much more important matter. With the outbreak of war in 1844 between Egypt on one side, and the Ottoman Empire in addition to the Great Powers of Europe on the other, the Epirotes seized the opportunity. The Great Powers saw the possibility of an Ottoman collapse and moved to prevent this. Epirus used this opportunity to declare a separate war on Egypt in 1845, in order to gain a few strategically important concessions._

_The Epirus-Egypt War ended the next year in 1846 with an Epirote victory. This secured the Sinai peninsula, the future area of the Suez canal, in addition to a large area around the Nile in middle Egypt. This put Epirus on the border with the Ottoman Empire at two different places, opening up the potential for a two-pronged attack against the Ottomans._

_However, this would prove of minimal importance during the majority of the Epirus-Ottoman Wars. The First Epirus-Ottoman War was – as mentioned before – an opportunistic attack, launched in 1853 while the Ottoman armies were being devastated by superior Russian forces. However, the Ottomans sealed a peace with the Russians later in the war, allowing them to turn the full might of their army against the smaller Epirote forces._

_Despite casualties sustained by the Ottomans when fighting the Russians, the Ottoman force was still numerically superior and had rough technological parity with the Epirote armies. Prospects for an Epirote victory were not high. A miracle would have to happen to allow for an Epirote victory. And a miracle did happen._

_At the end of the first year of the war, a decisive battle took place at Saranta Ekklisiès (Turkish: Kırk Kilise). This battle is said to have decided the fate of Epirus and the Ottoman Empire, and the world at large. It was called an "Ottoman Manzikert" by some who were well-versed in history. Most called it the "Miracle at Saranta Ekklisiès". Regardless, the Ottomans made a gamble to crush the Epirotes with the full might of their military in one decisive battle. This gamble failed, and with terrible results for the Ottoman Empire. They had gambled nearly all of their forces and lost most of them._

_The leader of the Epirote forces at Saranta Ekklisiès was the Soldier Emperor Constantine XV Komnenos, recognised as a military genius after this victory. The last two years of the war following this battle were mostly spent hunting down Ottoman remnants and occupying territory. The Ottoman Sultan finally gave in and the war ended in 1856. Epirus seized all of the Aegean Islands (including Crete), Ottoman Macedonia, Southern Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Ottoman parts of Thessaly, and what came to later be known as "Epirus-Shkoder" (though it should be noted, only in historical contexts. It is today a part of the theme of Epirus). This neatly divided Ottoman Europe in two, which was pointed out during the negotatiations, prompting Emperor Constantine XV to state, "That is the point"._

_The time following the First Epirus-Ottoman War was focused on yet more expansion of the Epirote military and the eradication of secessionist movements. This latter focus was two-fold. While in most areas, tolerance and cooperation was preached; while in some, (particularly the more violent ones) uprisings were crushed with brutal efficiency and the population put under surveillance. These conquests also brought in the problem of a sizeable population of Muslims. As Epirus built its identity on Orthodoxy (in contrast to the nationalistic states), this was a large problem. The Epirote government eventually decided to take a "Carrot and Stick" approach._

_However, there was also unrest in the old core territory of Epirus. Due to the education afforded, an increasingly larger portion of the population wanted an end to the autocratic rule of the Emperor and the rubber-stamp nature of the Epirote Senate. The Emperor was eventually forced to give in, granting a limited form of contitutionalism and some manner of elections. However, it was a far cry from being democratic and not in the least similar to the current Roman Empire. While not accomplishing much, this laid the foundations for future reforms._

_An important event during this interlude was another war between the Ottomans and Russia. Russia aimed to acquire a huge swathe of the northern Ottoman coast which included the important cities of Kerasunt and Trebizond. However, intervention of some of the Great Powers and the insistence of Epirus ended up with the Russians transferring that land under nominal Epirote authority. It was, however, effectively an independent state until the restoration of the Roman Empire and played no role in regards to the Epirus-Ottoman Wars except for weakening the Ottomans._

_The Second Epirus-Ottoman War erupted in 1866. This time, the Ottomans did not stand alone. The British, realising the damage that further Epirote expansion would do to the Status Quo, intervened once they were free from other commitments. This happened quite early during the war, but had minimal effect during most of the war as the British were too commited defending their vast empire to deploy sizeable forces quickly enough._

_The Epirotes were of course unaware of this, and continued with the original plan which called for a quick destruction of the Ottoman forces, who had not entirely recovered from the earlier losses and the loss of potential recruiting grounds. The Ottoman armies were wiped out in Anatolia. The Epirote armies moved to occupy major Anatolian cities and Epirus intended to wipe out the Ottoman Empire then and there._

_However, that is when the British moved in with forces, reversing much of the Epirote gains. Epirus was pushed out of western Anatolia and eastern Thrace. However, sizeable areas of eastern Anatolia remained in Roman hands. After a devastating British defeat in western Thrace, they finally agreed to a peace treaty with Epirus as they were unwilling to lose more men on what they had come to realise as a hopeless struggle (That of keeping the dying Ottoman Empire alive)._

_Peace was signed in May 1867, ending the Second Epirus-Ottoman War with tremendous gains for Epirus. The majority of Ottoman Eastern Anatolia came under Epirote control, in addition to a few small gains in Eastern Thrace and Bulgaria._

_The period between the Second and Third Epirus-Ottoman War involved yet more military build-up. By the eve of the start of the Third Epirus-Ottoman War, the Epirote army had surpassed its Ottoman counterpart in size while maintaining technological parity. Before this, Epirus had expanded its Egyptian holdings and brought both Tunisia and Ethiopia under its influence. For Tunisia, this would result in a slow incorporation, but for Ethiopia, this would result in a dramatic increase of power and extensive modernisation._

_The Third Epirus-Ottoman War, which began in 1872, was a foregone conclusion. Without outside support, the Epirote armies managed to quickly and efficiently destroy the Ottoman armies and seize control of all of Western Anatolia, Libya, Hedjaz, Northern Bulgaria and Eastern Thrace. Most importantly however, was the regaining of the Imperial Capital, Constantinople._

_Risen anew, like a phoenix from the ashes, the Roman Empire was proclaimed restored – two weeks after the conclusion of the Third Epirus-Ottoman War – in 1873 on the 14th of September by the Emperor of Epirus and All Hellas in Constantinople. He subsequently crowned himself Emperor of the Romans in front of the Hagia Sophia. At this time, Constantine XV was aged 58, and would continue ruling as Roman Emperor until his death thirteen years later in 1886._

_The Fourth and Fifth Wars against the Ottomans that followed after this were mostly a process of "mopping up", sweeping aside the last vestiges of Ottoman rule._

_Continue on to Page 4._


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Notes:**_ I apologise beforehand on a part of this chapter which might be slightly uninteresting and long-winded to some, but which is necessary for a multitude of reasons._

_Thanks to NoMoreSanity for beta reading and helping with the fic._

**Disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect.**

**Claimer: I do own my Original Creations (OCs).**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 2: Home Sweet Home<strong>

_"War is the continuation of politics through other means" – Carl von Clausewitz_

The APC rolled smoothly along the Anatolian road, surrounded on all sides by a row of military vehicles which comprised one section of the Opsician Tagma. Antonios sat on the same seat as before, with the window to his right and Mehmet to his left. The rest of the APC was filled with the other squadmembers, though one seat was empty. It had not been his fault, but Antonios still blamed himself a little. If he had been more attentive and quicker then Nikolaos would still be alive, was his reasoning. The only visible manifestations of Antonios's self-blame was a slightly sad posture and expression, which disappeared as he pushed away all of those feelings to the back of his head, replaced instead by a look of indifference.

A slight bump in the road shook the APC as it travelled across the Anatolian landscape, whose rough and uneven nature was familiar to the whole squad. The familiar landscape of Anatolia had been a welcome change from the Russian steppe and the Caucasian mountains which they had become well-acquainted with during the fight with the Soviets. A fight which they would probably never have to participate in again as the USSR was reportedly falling apart. Antonios had overheard some officers talking about a combined assault at Moscow to finish off the Reds once and for all now that Leningrad had been fully secured, freeing up the allied forces believed necessary for a successful assault on the Soviet capital. The city had been a tough nut to crack for the Nordic (though actually just Finnish as it was well-known that most of the other members of the Nordic Union only provided token support) and Polish-Lithuanian forces and had tied up an impressive amount of forces.

All of that was not of his concern though, for they had been granted leave in order to rest. They would have one whole week off, after which it was back to training, though they would always need to be ready to immediately return to active service in the event that the Opsician Tagma was needed. Antonios doubted the fact that they would be needed soon and was looking forward to the cessation of their years of constant fighting.

The whole vehicle column stopped for a moment as the gates to the military base up ahead were opened up. Their APC moved after the vehicles in front as the vehicle column moved into the base. After some time, the personnel carrier came to a stop, and they all dismounted it in good order. Antonios exited the APC fairly late after the others, to be met with a familiar sight. The base hadn't changed much from when they had last been there, many of the structures being readily recognisable, such as the military hospital which was taller than many of the surrounding structures. The gray guard tower at the gate which they had entered through was also still there, and the fence hadn't changed a bit. The setting sun in the distance cast a calm light over it all.

As usual when returning to base, they were ordered to check-up their equipment. They all went there except for the squad's leader. When asked why, Tsolakoglou said, "Oh ya know, the brass wants to see me for the usual things". They entered the armoury - which had a number of personnel guarding it - and once inside one of its many rooms they began taking off all of their weapons and laying them on a table in the centre of the room. After this, they did a quick check-up of the weapons, making sure that they were in working order. They then removed the rest of their equipment, at the end leaving them all in their usual brown uniforms.

As they were about to leave the armoury, a man in a uniform similar to theirs entered the room. "Hey there", the man said, "You're to report to the red structure just beside the military hospital for a full psychological check-up". The man left shortly thereafter, after receiving affirmations from the squad. The indicated red structure was indeed right beside the military hospital, which they could see from the armoury. They covered the distance and soon found themselves shown to a waiting room devoid of any real concentration of people.

"Well, not too shabby", said Özgür as he sat down in one of the rigid wooden chairs present in the room, which was otherwise devoid of decorations except for a wide window to the left of a brown door. Its walls were a featureless and dirty white, with one or two shelves mounted onto them for what appeared to be no reason at all. On these shelves there were the occasional object which none of them paid any greater attention to, while most of them were simply empty. Antonios sat down on a chair right beside the sniper, with the wide window in front of him with glimmers of sunlight from the setting sun occasionally shining through. The others occupied the rest of the chairs in the small room, except for Mehmet who was the first one called in.

"So...anyone of you saw that shot I did during that first battle?", said Özgür, looking around the room and its dull white walls at the others as he did so.

"I didn't", said Stavros, followed shortly thereafter by the others.

Özgür sighed, and said, "You really didn't see that? I nailed a Soviet sniper right between the eyes as he was thinking of doing the same to me. Must've been in the same building which you ran into".

They all shook their heads, and Antonios said, "Nope, didn't see. On the other hand, you guys really should've seen that Soviet sniper me and Mehmet took down. He was trying to enter an apartment!". Looks of disbelief passed around the squad.

"He didn't try to shoot you when he saw you?", said Anthimos from across the room.

Antonios shook his head, "Nah, not that we gave him the time to anyway".

They went on to discuss various exploits and desultory topics as they waited. Antonios found himself participating in the conversations less and less as time went on, instead thinking about how wonderful it was going to be to finally come home after so long. It had been years since he had last been home, and a lot had happened. Apparently, from what he had read through the occasional letter, his grandfather had moved in and the house had been refurbished a bit.

It would definitely be good to come home, he could already picture the town where he and his family all lived with its myriad of white, brown and yellow houses and the unmistakeable mountains and hills in the background. Hopefully, the skies would also be clear, and the moon would cast a light over the dark grassy landscape with its occasional plots of farmland.

Antonios's thoughts were interrupted by someone calling out, "Antonios Stavridis". That was his cue to get up and enter the room which Stavros had just come from, a few metres to Antonios's right. He rose from the uncomfortable wooden chair which he had been sitting on, turned to his right and away from the window with its fleeting glimmers of sunlight and to the brown door about three or four metres away. It stood open, but one could not spot anything beyond the threshold except for a few walls which had the same white colour as those in the waiting room, though visibly much cleaner. Antonios pushed the door opened, stepped over the threshold, and closed it behind him.

* * *

><p>The ride was bumpy as the APC drove along the uneven Anatolian road. The whole squad (minus Nikolaos) was along for the ride, and now that they were all back in casual clothing and heading home, the strict military discipline and manners were starting to loosen up a bit, although it had done so even at the military base. This APC had rather large windows, and Antonios could see farmland and grass-covered hills streak past outside. The sun had gone down, being instead replaced by the faint illumination of the moon and electric lighting, casting a gray shadow over the Anatolian landscape.<p>

By the farmlands, he could often spot multiple structures, and occasionally small villages went past the window. Lights shone in these villages, and in the few ones that they drove through, Antonios caught glimpses of people moving about on the illuminated streets, with maybe also a car now and then driving off down another road to whatever business its driver was on.

"So, what're you going to do now with all this free time?", said Bogdan to Mehmet, drawing Antonios's attention away from the serene landscape. It was a valid question, as it had been a long time ago that they had been afforded some real free time. Antonios himself was unsure of what he was going to do, probably just rest and recuperate his strength. Or he would be out and about with some people and playing his favourite sports. He knew he could count on Mehmet for that, and probably a few others from the squad. He also knew a lot of people in the town which he used to play with back before he shipped out to Hungary, but that was a while ago.

"I don't really know. Though if mum had her way then it would probably be to help out my brother on the family farm", said Mehmet.

"Maybe she'll let you just rest?", said Antonios, though he doubted his own words. Mehmet's mother was to him infamously stern.

"Fat chance", said Mehmet with a smile.

"So Antonios, what're you going to do?", said Bogdan suddenly and without any forewarning whatsoever.

Antonios contemplated his answer for a few brief seconds before saying, "Nothing. That or just playing football if any of you are up for it".

"Training for the world cup?", said Tsolakoglou from the front, sitting to the right of the driver, which meant he was a few seats away, but in front of Antonios and Mehmet.

"Nah, the Germans would probably beat us", said Antonios. "I mean, they've got some of the best teams: Bavaria, Prussia, Brandenburg, Luxembourg, the lot of them".

"Well, that would only be if they unified. But they ain't since last I heard", said Bogdan.

Stavros cleared his throat, drawing everybody's attention onto him. "Actually, don't know 'bout you, but I've heard rumours that the King of Luxembourg has been allowed to unify Germany under his rule". He said all of this in his usual speaking tempo, which outpaced that of all the others in the squad.

"A Luxembourger Empire?", said Mehmet disbelievingly, "What?".

"I doubt it'll be like Prussian Germany". Said Bogdan, "Just another bunch of diehard peace-loving, uh, sheeps".

"After what they've been through, it's not surprising", said Stavros.

Antonios decided to jump in on the conversation. "Well, I doubt that Luxembourg itself will dominate it. I mean, despite the fact that yes they control the industrial heartland, they are about as large as Bavaria. I don't think they can dominate it all".

"That's where you're wrong", said Tsolakoglou. "Luxembourg will be the dominant power, and that is actually what the Imperial Federation and France wants". A few brief moments of silence followed this abrupt statement.

"Aaanyways", said Özgür, "moving along to something other called Luxemburg, shouldn't Rosa have dropped dead by now?"

"How so?", said Antonios.

"Well, she's 74, and have been showing signs of deteriorating health for some time".

"I think her attitude in holding together China is why she's still alive", said Bogdan. "Real good attitude too, gets stuff done".

"Too bad that she's working for such a nonsensical ideology then", said Özgür with a smile. They all shared a chuckle at Rosa Luxemburg's expense. Though they all had a dislike of Communism, most tended to have a friendly attitude to China despite it actually being Communist, albeit a different brand than the Soviet Union. Antonios thought this was due to China being one of the few states helping out the Roman Empire against the USSR. Turning away from the conversation inside, the landscape outside was getting darker. However, Antonios could discern a very familiar mountain in the distance, and while there were lights scattered along the road and landscape, a congregation of them could be spotted in the distance.

The road went over a hill and as soon as the APC had climbed that hill, the group of lights could be seen clearly at the end of the road. A mass of structures were there, and not long after going over the hill, they passed a sign which welcomed them to the town which Antonios's family called home. Their transport drove along the bumpy road, which led into the town. Houses of many different kinds were on both of the sides. Some were gray, others were brown. Many of them were wooden or stony, but there were also houses made out of cement.

As the APC drove through the town on its way to the plaza, they passed by a great many buildings which Antonios recognised. They drove by the old market structure, a white building which now served a rather different purpose. They also drove by several restaurants, including one serving American cuisine of all kinds. That restaurant had various specialities which ranged from Argentina to the U.S.A.. To any visitors of the town, it would have been quite a surprise seeing a restaurant serving American cuisine, as the new world was quite isolationist. They didn't even really participate in any of the World Wars.

The APC rolled into the town plaza and stopped beside the pavement. The plaza was not really anything of note as it was pretty much just an open square surrounded by shops and restaurants. The whole squad dismounted from the vehicle, which took a slight bit longer than usual as they were in no real hurry. When Antonios had jumped out and shut the door to the vehicle, the driver and Tsolakoglou exchanged a salute after which the APC turned and drove away along the way that they'd come from.

As the sun had already gone down, the plaza was dark, lit only by electric lights. There weren't really anybody out and about either, which was quite understandable as it was pretty late. They stood there in silence for a moment before Tsolakoglou said, "Well, I don't know 'bout you, but I'm going home".

They all agreed on that subject, and said goodbye to each other. Most of them headed in different directions, but Antonios and Mehmet went together since they were neighbours. The two men walked along the pavement, coming farther and farther away from the centre of the town. They did not stay silent during this though, and discussed a great many things, including the fact that neither of them had a girlfriend and the fact that the Emperor had recently died.

"So, you going to watch the crowning ceremony?", said Antonios.

"Yeah, if I could travel to Constantinople. Or will it be televised too?", said Mehmet.

"Andronikos probably wouldn't want to have it any other way".

"True, what number will he be now anyways? The IX?".

"No, the VII", said Antonios.

After some time, having passed by a great many structures of varying shapes and colours, Antonios could discern the house of his family looming not far away, and while he could also spot Mehmet's house, it was much farther away and surrounded by farmland. They said their goodbyes and went separate ways, Mehmet continuing on and eventually walking on a dirt road while Antonios simply crossed the street and knocked on the door.

He pulled open the door himself without waiting for anyone to come and open it. The hall which he stepped into was rather tidy – much tidier than he remembered – with the floor devoid of visible dirt and the shoes arranged neatly by the right wall which was a comfortable brown colour. The clothes on the rack assigned for outdoor clothing, located directly above the shoes, were also rather tidily arranged. Not that they were very used during this time, but still.

"Hey, anybody home?", said Antonios as he pulled off his shoes and placed them to the side among all the other shoes.

"Antonios!", said a man who suddenly appeared around the left corner.

"Hey dad", said Antonios. His father hadn't changed much except for the fact that he looked older. He still had all of his scars though.

"You've just arrived from the front right?", said Antonios's father.

"Yeah, pretty much. Had a check-up at the base but nothing more".

"Alright", said Antonios's father, and indicated that they move away from the hall and into a room to the right. More specifically the living room, where Antonios's grandfather sat in an arm chair and stared on a black and white screen. His grandfather was a very old man by now, and Antonios thought it showed in everything he did.

Antonios settled down in the living room's sole sofa, while his father remained standing. "Hey, where's mum", asked Antonios.

"She's out working", said his father. "Yes, she's still working in that bank".

Antonios opened his mouth to answer when he was interrupted by an offhanded comment by his grandfather, "It wasn't like that when I was young". Funnily enough, the aging man went back to watching the television straight thereafter.

Antonios turned his attention to the TV. The current broadcast was the coronation of the new emperor, Andronikos VII Komnenos. Despite the bad quality of the screen, one could still perceive an atmosphere of pomp and circumstance. As the coronation ceremny came to an end, his grandfather said, "Well, that looked more pompous than in my day. But it's something else entirely to be there! You know Antonios, when I was a little kid, I was there in Constantinople. Oh, it had been grand. You should've been there! Emperor John XI Komnenos it was, I even got to meet him in person there and shake his hand. Such a great man."

Antonios sighed, this was another one of those long-winded tales which his grandfather had a penchant for elapsing into. He subtly ignored the rest of the tale, and instead turned his attention to the television. It was running an advertisement for a documentary on Rosa Luxemburg. "Watch the life of the woman who came from defeat to victory. The German leading China to a new future. How the founder of the Chinese People's Federation managed to form a cohesive state out of such a splintered region".

Antonios noticed that his grandfather had stopped his tale when his father said that he was going to go prepare dinner. His grandfather had apparently gone back to watching the TV again. After the advertisement for the Luxemburg documentary had ended, it was apparently time for a news re-run.

"Good evening", said the man on the screen who stood in the news studio. He proceeded to go through the local and domestic news first, and then jumped to news from abroad.

"The Foreign Minister of the Imperial Federation – Reginald Tremblay – has stated that the Federation is in favour of the reunification of Germany and that he hopes that the King of Luxembourg will be able to guide Germany on a more peaceful path.

"The Western European Union and the United Nations of Greater Austria has also made a statement in favour of German unity.

"In other news, Poland-Lithuania has made a press release critisising the lack of support by Western Europe and the Imperial Federation in the war against the USSR. Poland-Lithuania also condemned the attitude of most of Europe to the west of it that the Commonwealth is simply a buffer state against the Soviet Union.

"Queen Victoria II has made a public address from the capital of the Imperial Federation – London – about-"

Antonios's attention was torn away from the television by his grandfather. "Say, how was it, fighting the Reds?", said his grandfather. Antonios reluctantly agreed and told his grandfather a compressed version of the events which he had participated in during the war.

"Hah, that's way more eventful than you father's tales in the military", said Antonios's grandfather, "I remember this one time when I asked him how it had been after he'd received a vacation. And you know what he said? He said-".

Antonios stopped paying attention to what his grandfather was saying there. A pleasant smell was emanating from the kitchen. Food. He realised just then how hungry he actually was. The TV was going on in the background with more news from the front, of how Leningrad had been captured. It was at that moment that Antonios somehow found himself wondering when the war would actually end.

* * *

><p>1956 – The Soviet War is over. The (Eastern) Roman Empire, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (PLC) and China annex vast amounts of territory. The rest of Russia is split up into a number of weak states. These are: Petrograd, Novgorod, Moscow, Volgograd, Kazakhstan, Tadjikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzistan, Turkmenistan, Trans-Urali, Krasnoyarsk, Tomsk, Yakutia, Irkutsk, Kamchatka and Chukotka-Magadan.<p>

With the dust after the Second World War now settled, four human blocs emerge: The Purple League, led by the Roman Empire and aside from the aforementioned state includes: Germany, Austria, the PLC and various African states including Ethiopia.

The Union of America, led by the United States of America and includes nearly all of the Americas (the greatest exceptions being the Imperial and European possessions such as Canada, Belize and French Guyana).

The Western European Union led by France and aside from France includes: Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy. It later on grows to include most of the former colonial possessions of these countries.

And lastly, the enormous Imperial Federation stands on its own.

The most important non-aligned states are the Nordic Union and the Chinese People's Federation.

All of these are international organisations and most are very loosely organised with the exception of the Western European Union which has elements of being a state in its own right.

1957 – The promised autonomous status is granted to several chinese territories, including: Xinjiang, Tibet, Outer Mongolia, Inner Mongolia and Outer Manchuria with Yunnan and other southern chinese regions being granted a more limited form of autonomy.

In late 1957, Rosa Luxemburg dies, aged 75.

1958 – Beginning of the Space Race. The primary competitors are the Roman Empire and its associates, the Union of America and lastly the Imperial Federation. The Western European Union joins the Space Race a few months later.

1959 – Adoption of "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" in the Chinese People's Federation. It is a derivation of Luxemburgism.

Talks of the Nordic Union cooperating with the Imperial Federation in the Space Race begins

Late 1959 – The Nordic Union and Imperial Federation agrees to cooperate in the Space Race.

4 October 1960 – First satellite in space. The Imperial Federation's Traveler 1.

Later that same year, a failed Western European launch occurs due to West European leaders shortening the launch schedule as they do not want to fall behind the Imperials

On 4 November, the joint Nordic and Imperial Space Programme successfully launches a live passenger into Space, the dog "Winston". Winston does not survive long, likely due to overheating. Following this, the Nordic/Imperial Programme makes several more tests aimed at living passengers in space. These all take place over a three year period.

In late 1960's, the (Eastern) Roman Empire invites the rest of the Purple League to join in the race on its side. Germany, Austria and the PLC accepts. African members do not as they do not have the economy to be able to spare any significant resources for the Space Programme.

1961 – the (Eastern) Roman Empire launches its first satellite, Justinian 1. Shortly thereafter, the Union of America and the Western European Union does so as well.

1962 – A Western European test launch fails, with terrifying results. The rocket detonates like a bomb and around 40-80 workers are killed in the ensuing fire.

1964 – The Purple League wins the Space Race. The first man in Space is not a man, but a woman: Eudoxia Constantinopoulos.

One week after this, the defeated Americans decide to launch the Moon Race.

1965 – Both the Joint Imperial-Nordic Space Programme and the Union of America successfully manages to launch a man into orbit and safely return him back to Earth. A few months later, the West Europeans does as well.

The President of the USA makes his by-now famous "We choose the Moon" speech.

Start of unmanned expeditions into the rest of the Solar System by all space programmes.

1966 – the African members of the Purple League decides to provide nominal support to the League's Artemis Space programme.

1967 – The Imperial Federation unveils a 100 megaton bomb. Its yield is reduced by half when tested later in the year, to decrease nuclear fallout.

1968 – Rapid Chinese economic growth has prompted a rapid modernisation of China. Chinese influence has spread over a large part of asia, promoting cooperation and reconciliation among the various asian nations.

1969 – talks of an East Asian power bloc to counter the other four begin.

The Joint Imperial-Nordic Space Programme and the Union of America both prepare to conduct several manned tests in Earth orbit, including space walks.

1970 – The Imperial-Nordic Space Programme performs the first space walk.

Later that year, the Americans manages to get the first unmanned probe (Luna 7) to land on the Moon.

1971 – Establishment of the East Asian Confederacy, a loose organisation. It is led by the Chinese People's Federation and includes: Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Burma and Japan.

Both Americans and the Western Europeans manage to land remote-controlled Moon Rovers on the Moon.

1972 – Disaster strikes the Western European Space Programme once again. A launch fails and results in a cabin fire which kills the entire crew of three astronauts. The Western European Union stalls further expeditions until improvements are made.

1973 – The Imperial-Nordic Space Programme successfully manages a flyby of the Moon and makes plans for a Lunar landing the next year.

1974 – Three Cosmonauts from the Purple League - Friedrich Meier, Vladimir Kushov and Özkan Harun – are the first humans to travel to the Moon. Two of them – Kushov and Özkan – are the first humans to walk on the Moon. There, Özkan said the now world-famous phrase, in the Roman Imperial language and without accent, "Éna mikró ví̱ma gia éna ánthro̱po, éna megálo ví̱ma gia ti̱n anthro̱póti̱ta". They remained on the Moon for about two and one quarter hours before returning to Earth. During that time, they planted the Imperial Banner on the surface in addition to other activities.

In late 1974, the Imperial-Nordic Space Programme manages to land a team on the Moon as well. This is shortly thereafter followed by an American landing in late December.

Further manned Moon Expeditions would be conducted throughout the rest of the decade, but only irregularly after 1976.

1975 – While the other Space Programmes were working on travelling to the Moon, the Western Europeans decided to abandon their efforts to travel to the Moon and instead focus on the construction of space stations. In this year, they launched their first space station, Salut 1. However, it suffered many problems. The first crew sent there couldn't enter. The second crew managed to enter and do important work, but died on re-entry when their capsule accidentally depressurised. Though this slowed down the programme, the lessons learnt managed to over-all improve it.

1976 – The last major planned manned Moon Expeditions happen. The competitors turn their eyes to orbital stations after seeing the success of the Western European space stations.

1977 – The Union of America counters the Western European Salut Programme with the Skylab. However, it was made with surplus hardware from the Moon Programme and eventually proved to not be what the Americans hoped it to be. It was eventually decommissioned five years later.

1978 – Both the Imperial-Nordic Space Programme and the Purple League launch their first space stations.

1979 – While the space race had been going on, China and the East Asian Confederacy had been modernising. In March, the Chinese unveils a new weapon, a so-called Railgun. This sparks a technological arms race between the major human blocs in addition to the still-continuing space programmes.

1980 – The Purple Leage approach the Imperial Federation and Nordic Union with the proposal of combining their separate space programmes.

The last of the manned Moon Expeditions for a time occur.

In late 1980, the Western European Union launches Salut 7, an important milestone in the development of space stations and the first modular space station.

1981 – the Chinese unveils yet further new weaponry in a display of military power. This includes effective Laser-based Point Defence and devastating new missile weaponry. Speculations abound that the Chinese are going to launch their own space programme in the near future. Roman spies reveal to the Purple League that China has also developed a form of stealthed aircraft.

The Purple Leage, the Imperial Federation and the Nordic Union agree to merge their Space Programmes into one.

Meanwhile, in America, the Union of America has picked up on the idea of modular space stations and near the end of the year launches their own modular space station, "Freedom".

In late 1981, the Salut Programme comes to an end but the Western European Union is already preparing the next step. The Western Europeans are also starting construction of reusable spacecraft, or "space shuttles" as they will come to be called.

1982 – The Purple-Imperial-Nordic Space Programme follows the trend and manages to launch their own modular space station.

The Western European Union launches "Paris", a modular space station planned to be the largest yet and meant for research.

1983 – The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth unveils their own Railguns. They suffer from an enormous amount of wear and tear on the rails, but they are proven to work and be very effective.

In late 1983, the German Empire unveils the first break-even fusion reactor, a culmination of decades of research. It is not very large, but it does its job well. The world is shocked by this development but not terribly concerned as the German fusion reactor is expensive.

1984 – The Purple-Imperial-Nordic Space Programme draws up plans for a so-called "International Space Station" and for construction of space vessels in orbit. The Western European Union and the Union of America are invited to participate. The Western Europeans decline as they already have their own space station. The Union of America accepts due to the high maintenance cost of their own space station, Freedom, which is eventually decommissioned in 1991.

Plans are made by the Purple-Imperial-Nordic Space Programme for reusable spacecraft, drawing influence from the Western European Union.

1985 – The Western European Union unveils a new military weapon, coilguns. They are proven to be effective – though not as powerful as railguns with the same energy settings – and free from the wear and tear that railguns have. However, they consume a lot of energy.

1986 – Railgun technology has by now spread to all the major powers. The intense competition between the blocs accelerates weapons development even further.

On Mars, contact is mysteriously lost with a Western European probe landed on the surface of the red planet. Before contact is lost however, several pictures with odd objects on them are received. Most dismiss this as equipment malfunction.

1987 – The first component of the ISS is launched into space. Plans for an orbital maintenance and construction facility are finalised by the Purple-Imperial-Nordic Space Programme, to begin construction in a few years. The Union of America is not invited to participate in the development of this other orbital facility.

Disaster strikes the Western European space programme. A space shuttle breaks apart 74 seconds into its flight. All of its crew members are killed.

1988 – The other blocs start to catch up with China and the East Asian Confederacy. Unveiling of much new military technology. The PLC shocks the world with the unveiling of an over 150 megaton bomb, breaking the Imperial record bomb from 1967.

1989 – Germany agrees to Austrian assistance to its fusion reactor programme, with the Austrians being interested in not only the civilian applications of fusion, but the military applications of it as well.

The Western European space programme begins laying down plans for a Space Elevator to replace the space shuttles.

1990 – China unveils a new laser-based Defence System capable of disabling ICBMs from a tremendous range. All of the blocs want to take advantage of this new development and negotiations between the mutliple blocs and China continue throughout the rest of the decade with most powers acquiring some sort of contract with China, though not acquiring the technology itself. This is a great bonus to the already booming Chinese economy.

Construction on the orbital maintenance and construction facility begins. First component launched by the end of the year.

1991 – Construction begins on the new anti-nuclear Laser Defence Systems all throughout the East Asian Confederacy.

American space station Freedom is decommissioned. Plans are drawn up for new Expeditions to the Moon and nearby asteroids for extraction of materials. American plans for establishment of scientific bases on the Moon are also drawn up. Technology for the establishment of a Moon base has been continuously worked on by the Americans since their first Moon landing.

1994 – Germany and Austria jointly unveil the first economically profitable fusion reactor. The Roman Empire begin negotiations with them to partake in the fusion programme as well. Its main focus is on miniaturisation and efficiency.

1995 – Germany and Austria agrees to Roman assistance with the fusion programme. The Roman's vast resources speed up development.

Western European space elevator plans are finalised. Construction is scheduled to begin by the end of the decade.

1997 – The orbital maintenance and construction facility is nearly finished. However, several setbacks and problems delay its completion until 2001.

1999 – On the 21 of December, 25 years since the first American landing on the Moon, the Union of America launches a new manned Moon expedition. This expedition is meant to mark out suitable locations for a Moon base. The crew of four manages to do so and safely return home.

The Western Europeans begin construction on a Space Elevator. Western European plans for a replacement for the aging Paris space station are also drawn up.

* * *

><p><em>Codex: History of the (Eastern) Roman Empire: Modern Era: Continued: Following the fall of the last Ottoman bastion in Baghdad and the total dismantlement of the Ottoman Empire, the newly reborn Roman Empire was focused on recovery from these series of wars. The Romans also conducted an extensive restructuring of their territory, the most important change being the reimplementation of the old theme system.<em>

_However, during this period, the Romans were not solely focused on internal politics. They secured domination over most of the various states of the Arabian Peninsula. Several of these were directly incorporated into the Roman Empire while others were not. It was also during this time that the Romans solidified their control over the remnants of Egypt, eventually incorporating what remained of the Egyptian realm into the Roman Empire._

_When the Scramble for Africa began in 1881, the Romans kept largely out of it as they were already content with their territorial gains in Africa. The Roman participation in the Scramble amounted to delimiting their borders in Africa, peacefully incorporating Tunisia into the Empire, and helping their ally Ethiopia._

_It was during this time that the Roman Senate began becoming something more than simply a rubber-stamp. More and more concessions were made by the Emperor, weak from his old age. When the Emperor - Constantine XV Komnenos - died in 1886, the Senate seized the opportunity to further increase their power at the expense of the Emperor. However, the new Emperor, John XI Komnenos was popular with the people, especially the growing middle class who wanted to be able to participate in the elections to the Senate. At that time, the middle class had no representation in the Senate at all. This conflict between the aristocratic Senate and the Emperor would be left to simmer, to explosively erupt a few years after the end of the Roman-Persian War._

_Roman expansion started up again in 1890 with a war against Persia following an incident involving the murder of a Roman Armenian. The Persian refusal to accept the Roman ultimatum (which would essentially end Persian sovereignty) was what made the Romans decide on war. In February 1891, the Romans declared war on the pretext of "Liberating the oppressed Armenian, Kurdish and Azerbaijani peoples from under the Persian yoke"._

_The Romans expected a quick war against the Persians, but that assumption proved very wrong, as the war ended up as a long and gruelling five year affair. The defensive nature of the terrain of Western Persia made this all the harder, and the war ended up very costly. Nevertheless, the Romans emerged victorious, the peace treaty granting them the Armenian, Azerbaijani and Kurdish lands that they had claimed. However, the Romans also seized lands inhabited by peoples who were neither Armenian, Azerbaijani nor Kurdish. But these additional lands were not the majority of those ceded by Persia._

_After the conclusion of the war against Persia, the Roman Empire again focused inwards. The conflict between the Senate and the Emperor continued to simmer under the surface until erupting in 1896. This Civil War would decide Roman politics for the forseeable future. As the Senators had control of most of the tax income, the majority of the army would side with the Senate. However, John XI drummed up support from the people, promising them enfranchisement in exchange for their support in the Civil War. This angered the middle class, but they had no choice but to go along with it._

_In contrast to the military genius of his father, John XI Komnenos was much better at manipulating the people than the army. He used this to his advantage during the Civil War. However, it is also known that he was worthless at leading an army, a task which he therefore delegated to his more capable subordinates who most of the times were not in favour of any sort of absolutist rule, which would force John XI to go through with his promises of reform._

_Despite being initially outnumbered, the support of the people was what led to the victory of John XI over the Senate. After the victory of the loyalists and the conclusion of the Civil War in 1897, the leaders of the insurrection were deposed, blinded and sent to retire in monasteries. John XI Komnenos subsequently granted the concessions which he had promised, albeit reluctantly as he would be giving up much of his own power._

_After fully recovering from the Civil War, the Empire turned its gaze outwards, towards the rest of the world. At the turn of the century, the situation in Europe was becoming increasingly antagonistic, with arms build-ups on all sides. The Roman Empire was a bit after in the arms race – reeling from decades of conflict – but eventually managed to somewhat catch up._

_When the Austrian Archduke was assassinated in 1918, Europe quite simply exploded. After the Austrian declaration of war on Serbia following the Serbian rejection of the Austrian ultimatum, it took only a few weeks before nearly all of Europe was at war. The two great powers who were uninvolved in these initial weeks were Italy and the Roman Empire._

_This would change later as both Italy and the Roman Empire joined on the side of the Entente. Following the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1921 and the beginning of the Civil War, the Roman Empire sent in their forces stationed at the Russian border to seize control of the Kars region which the Russians had annexed from the Ottoman Empire back during the First Epirus-Ottoman War._

_Following the conclusion of the First World War, the Roman Empire was instrumental in keeping Austria-Hungary intact. The Romans wanted some sort of counter-weight in order to keep stability in the Balkans. They feared that if Austria was to be dismantled, a wave of Nationalism would sweep downwards through the peninsula and to the Empire._

_The Romans got their will through, though Austria-Hungary was reformed into the United Nations of Greater Austria and its territory was diminished, with pieces going to Italy, Romania and the newly recreated Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Most relevant to the Roman Empire however, was the fact that Serbia acquired only Bosnia-Hercegovina, failing its aim of unifying all of the South Slavs._

_During the inter-war period, the Romans kept relatively isolated from Europe. They conducted a few operations into Russia, still wracked by Civil War. This resulted in some small gains in the Caucasus and the annexation of Crimea. It was during the inter-war period that the idea of the Black Sea as a Roman lake came into being (called Mare Nostrum). This resulted in a few more Roman excursions into Civil War Russia than otherwise would have happened. However, all of the gains from these incursions and before were eventually all undone with the exception of Crimea._

_One could say that the inter-war period was the true birth of democracy in the Roman Empire, as it was then that the Roman Empire began to slowly transform into a democratic society and away from the domination of the wealthy and the aristocracy. Still, most view the inter-war period as an uneventful period of Roman history. However, an interesting occurence during this period was the great inerest expressed by the Roman military for Tesla's "teleforce" gun. However, they eventually turned down Tesla's offer, which was instead accepted by Tesla's country of origin, Austria._

_With the outbreak of the Second World War in 1944, the Roman military was called into action once again. The Roman involvement in the Second World War was focused on stopping Austria from being overrun by German troops, in addition to invading Axis-aligned Italy. The Roman military also knocked out Yugoslavia and Romania early on in the war, while holding a defensive position against the Soviet Union on the Crimea and in the Caucasus._

_The Crimea was eventually lost, and the Soviets managed to sometimes break through in the Caucasus, but they were ultimately repulsed. The Roman-Soviet skirmishes in the Caucasus continued in a back-and-forth manner for most of the war. Following the official end of the Second World War, - after the surrender of all Axis powers except for the Soviet Union - the Romans focused all their efforts towards the Soviets in what is nowadays called the "Soviet War". They coordinated their efforts with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Finland. The Chinese People's Federation joined this war later on._

_At the treaty table following the end of the Second World War in 1949 (during which the Soviet War was still continuing), the Roman Empire succeeded in imposing several of its aims. They were ceded the bottom-most part of southern Italy, which had historically been owned by the East Romans for a much longer time than the rest of Italy. They had been aiming to regain their Italian territories for a long time both before and after the restoration of the Empire. This had resulted in their acquisition of Sicily in the 19th century as a condition for allowing the unification of Italy (the Romans had at that time had the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies firmly in their sphere of influence)._

_Other gains were the Romanian coast and the installing of a Komnenid monarch in Romania. Additionally, Yugoslavia was partitioned between the Roman Empire and Austria with Austria regaining Bosnia-Hercegovina and the Romans annexing the other half._

_While the Soviet War was essentially just a continuation of the Second World War, many historians (especially historians from uninvolved countries) still insist on separating it. The Soviet War is commonly agreed to have started somewhere between 1949 and 1950 and ended in 1956. The Soviets proved themselves to be tough and resilient despite the instability of their state, but they were eventually defeated and the Soviet state itself had collapsed by the end of the war._

_After the end of the Soviet War, the powers involved settled down in Warszaw to decide on how to partition Russia. After concessions on both sides, the Romans managed to walk out from the negotiations with the whole of the Black Sea coast, all of the Caucasus and some of Southern Russia._

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>_ Yeah, I know, that was a rather lengthy timeline. I apologise._


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Notes: **_What is this? New chapter? Yup! I should probably apologise for the long and verbose timeline, which is continued here as only half of it was present in the chapter before this one._

_I should mention that a big source of inspiration for this fic is a fic by Bombsquad called "Mass Effect: A new past" as well as its sequel._

_And again, thanks to NoMoreSanity for beta reading and helping with the fic._

**Disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect.**

**Claimer: I do own my Original Creations (OCs).**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 3: The Red Planet<strong>

_"Anerriphtho kybos" – Julius Caesar_

2000 – The new century begins with the unveiling of a whole slew of new military technology. Austria unveils a new plasma based weapon, brought about by their close cooperation with the German fusion reactor programme and which is the end-product of several decades of development. This new weapon is called the "Tesla Teleforce Gun" after the deceased scientist who started its development all the way back in the early 1900s. It is a large and cumbersome weapon, but smaller than Tesla's initial plans. Media dubs it the "Tesla Gun".

Austria also unveils another of Tesla's inventions, an ion-propelled aircraft.

The International Space Station is dubbed "complete", though plans for expansion exist.

Seeing the Western Europeans new project and not wanting to fall behind, the Purple-Imperial-Nordic Space Programme begin sketching up plans for a Space Elevator.

2001 – Completion of the Purple-Imperial-Nordic's Orbital Maintenance and Construction Facility. Plans are made for the first experimental construction of spacecraft in space.

China unveils plans for a massive railgun designed to fire objects out into space from a low-gravity object such as the Moon. The other Earth blocs suspect that the Chinese are planning on launching its own Space Programme.

Austria, Germany and the Roman Empire jointly begin experimentation of various kinds of weapons in space, including studying the behaviour of directed energy weaponry (such as Tesla guns and laser beams) in space.

The Imperial Federation unveils particle beam weaponry.

2002 – The Orbital Maintenance and Construction Facility begins its first construction project. Materials are shipped up from Earth.

China launches its own Space Programme, though they had been launching their own satellites since a long time ago, this is their first serious attempt at a real space programme. Chinese plans are drawn up for orbital space stations and an expedition to the Moon.

Disaster strikes the Western European Space Elevator project, slowing it down remarkably as they fix the problems. The elevator cable breaks in half due to the materials used in its construction not being able to take the strain.

2003 – The Union of America deploys its first unmanned mining probe to a nearby asteroid. The mission is a success and the probe manages to bring back a large amount of rare metals.

Conclusion of Austrian-German-Roman space weaponry experiments. Lasers are proven to be incredibly potent weapons in space. Tesla Guns are proven to have a much longer range in space, something believed for a long time but not proven until now. Missiles are also proven to be effective weapons in a space environment along with Railguns and Coilguns.

The Purple-Imperial-Nordic Space Programme finalises its plans for a Space Elevator. Construction is planned to proceed the next year.

Western European plans for the replacement of the Paris space station are finalised. Production of components begin.

2004 – China launches the first component of its first space station. The rest of the East Asian Confederacy are eager to join in, and eventually do so by the end of the year.

Construction begins on the Purple-Imperial-Nordic Space Elevator.

2005 – The Union of America launches its Moon base construction project. Construction is expected to be finished by the end of the decade.

2006 – The first construction project of the Orbital Maintenance and Construction (OMC) Facility is finished. It is a success and will serve as an example of the viability of space-based construction. The OMC Facility will continue constructing various kinds of spacecraft until its decommissioning and total replacement fourteen years later.

2007 – The East Asian Confederacy launches its first manned Moon expedition in accordance with the plan laid out by China. The mission is deemed a success despite unexpected problems.

2008 – Setbacks in the construction of the American Moon base sets its date of completion back by a year.

Completion of the first Chinese space station. Plans are laid out by the East Asian Confederacy for a space-based Shipyard.

Purple-Imperial-Nordic plans are laid down for the replacement of the OMC Facility. They also lay down plans for space-based extraction of resources following the success of the American project.

2011 – Construction begins on the replacement for the Orbital Maintenance and Construction Facility.

Completion of the American Moon base. American plans are drawn up for a Mars expedition in 2025.

The American President makes a "We choose Mars" speech, imitating the earlier one about the Moon and thereby launching the Mars Race.

2012 – The Western European Space Elevator is finished and is undergoing extensive testing. It is planned to be taken into full-time use the next year or so.

Not wanting to fall behind the Americans, the Purple-Imperial-Nordic Space Programme begins sketching up plans for the construction of a permanent settlement on the Moon.

Also, all space programmes begin sketching up plans for a Mars Expedition. The immense distance required to be crossed spurs development of new travel technology.

2013 – The East Asian Confederacy begins research into means of faster-than-light travel despite the believed impossibility of FTL.

Later in the year, the Western European Space Elevator is approved for full-time use. The space shuttle programme is put on indefinite hold.

2014 – Western European construction of the replacement of the Paris space station begins, utilising the new Space Elevator to ship components up into space.

The East Asian Confederacy begins sketching up plans for a base and construction facilities on the Moon in addition to a railgun. Though they lack the means to do so, they immediately set about acquiring them.

2015 – Completion of the Purple-Imperial-Nordic Space Elevator. Extensive testing is conducted. Plans are made to begin using it in 2017.

2016 – Multiple new and advanced fusion reactors are completed across Germany, Austria and the Roman Empire.

The replacement for the Paris space station is taken into service, though full completion is expected two years later, in 2018. It is dubbed "Nova Venezia".

2017 – The Purple-Imperial-Nordic Space Elevator begins its long service. It is instrumental in shipping up the last components for the replacement of the OMC Facility.

The East Asian Confederacy begins construction on a Space Elevator, expecting a quick completion due to the experience already present from the two other Space Elevators.

2018 – Completion of the replacement for the OMC Facility. It is dubbed "Unity" and is a vast multi-purpose space station and shipyard. The Purple-Imperial-Nordic Space Programme plans to decommission the OMC Facility in 2020.

Nova Venezia is completed on schedule.

2020 – The OMC Facility is decommissioned. Plans for a Moon settlement are finalised, and the Purple-Imperial-Nordic Space Programme immediately proceeds with the project. The spacecraft meant to travel to the Moon begin construction at Unity.

East Asian Confederacy plans for a Moon base are finalised.

2024 – The first East Asian Space Elevator is finished at a record time. East Asians begin phase two of their Moon base plans, involving the construction of a space-based drydock/shipyard.

2025 – The Union of America launches the first manned Mars Expedition. It is planned to help in setting up a future Mars base by dropping off several base components.

2026 – Early in the year, the American Mars Expedition arrives at Mars. The Western European Union launches its own manned Mars Expedition, utilising a new travel system that – among other things – uses anti-matter. It arrives at Mars the same year, much faster than the American Expedition.

Later that same year, the American Mars Expedition begins the long voyage home.

A Western European mining probe suffers a fatal error while mining an asteroid.

2027 – The Western European Mars Expedition begins the voyage home and arrives back at Earth later this year.

The American Mars Expedition returns home.

2028 – East Asian drydock/shipyard is completed. East Asians begin phase three of their Moon base plans.

2029 – As the decade comes to a close, the intense space and military competition has brought about new advances in technology and a multitude of installations outside of Earth. Private contractors have constructed a number of space habitats and stations.

Additionally, fusion technology has spread throughout the whole Purple League and both the Nordic Union and the Imperial Federation are beginning construction of their own reactors.

2030 – Plans for Mars bases are drawn up by the various space power blocs. Also, plans for a permanent settlement on the Moon are drawn up by the Western European Union and the Union of America.

2031 – Western Europeans sketch up plans for a large mining vessel, meant to partly replace the mining probes. They also sketch up plans for unmanned freighter ships designed to act as drop-off points for mining probes. They also start to design a new type of mining probe optimised to work with these new freighter ships, which mostly means the elimination of the large cargo hold of the probes.

2032 – The Roman Empire begins plans for its own shipyard and spacecrafts, meant to be solely under Roman authority and not under the Joint Space Programme.

2035 – Purple-Imperial-Nordic construction of the first settlement on the Moon is finished. That same month, the East Asian Moon Base is completed.

2036 – 2038 – Various bases on Mars are built, helped about by the spreading of technology between the blocs.

2040 – The new decade opens up with all human powers focusing on Mars as Moon bases and settlements are all finished.

2050 – Numerous bases have been constructed on Mars by the various space nations. Joint Space Programmes start to splinter as their individual members gain technology and resources (especialyl from space mining) to start their own.

China unveils what comes to be dubbed "Warp Gate" technology. It allows near-instantaneous travel between two ring-shaped linked objects called Gates (also Halos by some). Construction begins on two Gates, one at Earth and the other at Mars.

2060 – Chinese Warp Gates finished and linked, bringing in massive revenue as all of the various space-faring nations want to use them.

2063 – Founding of the first human settlement on Mars.

* * *

><p><strong>2085<strong>

**Mars**

It was just another day at the Imperial Martian South Pole Observatory. Richard Eastley sat at his desk as usual with his cup of tea in hand. The Observatory was a permanent structure, though most of it was underground, including the room which housed the combined station of Richard and two of his colleagues – Lataben Sunil Kumari and Mark Jameson. Despite the name of the observatory, it did not solely fix its activities on just the South Pole but also the area surroundng the Pole as well as areas south of the Martian equator.

There were a number of rooms similar to the one that Richard was in. They all included the equipment necessary for their tasks, all of which were of a high quality. The observatory had as its mission to make scans of the south pole as well as both launch and coordinate Imperial expeditions to that area. It was one of multiple Imperial observatories located on Mars, the majority of which were far away from major settlements.

The Imperial settlement closest to the South Pole Observatory was Redwood, over 100 kilometres away. Still, modern tech had made outposts as isolated as this one feasible. The Observatory had begun operating only three years ago, and had already proven its worth by uncovering valuable aggregations of various metals, which were even now being mined by Imperial Mining Probes.

Richard's section, however, was not concerned with finding valuable metals. Their main objective was the analysing of the south pole. Currently, they were scanning the region known as Promethei Planum. Richard took a sip from his cup as he intently analysed the information displayed by the screen of his computer. At the two other desks his colleagues were doing the same, with the exception of Mark who was currently in another part of the facility.

The room was not that large, but it provided enough space for all three of them. Papers and data pads were strewn about everywhere, along with various pieces of equipment arranged in a more orderly manner. It provided for a slightly chaotic look to the whole room, lit as it was by a clear white light.

The door to the room suddenly flew opened. Richard threw a quick glance at who had entered. It was a middle-aged man, with distinctive black hair and a dark skin tone. In contrast to Richard, the face of this man was neither decorated with a pair of glasses nor a moustache. All in all, the man looked quite average with the small collection of papers held in his hand. The name tag on his gray shirt identified him as Mark Jameson.

Mark sat down at his desk – in between Richard and Kumari – and put the papers to the side. "Well, seems like we've got our equipment upgraded while we weren't looking", said Mark in a nasal tenor, his canadian accent allowing one to easily discern which part of the Empire he came from.

"So that is why the scans have suddenly become so excellent?", said Richard. He had actually been curious as to why the scans had recently become so much more accurate and sharper.

"Yeah, but if you'd ask me, I think they just want us to discover something worthwhile to exploit", said Mark, eliciting a sigh from Richard and a shake of the head from Kumari.

"Oh give it up with your conspiracy theories", said Kumari, turning away from the screen of her computer to face Mark.

"What? That's the sole reason why this outpost exists", was Mark's answer. Kumari simply shook her head and turned back to her work.

Richard sighed, and said to the slightly dumbfounded Mark, "You have said that over a hundred times before. It is getting quite tiresome". He turned back to his work as well, taking a sip from his cup of tea as he did so, before putting it down on the desk.

Mark sighed, "Alright, so maybe I have mentioned it a lot, but still".

The room fell into a relative silence, the only sounds being the turning of papers, the tapping of keys and the occasional sound of Richard putting down his cup on the desk. Time elapsed as they analysed the most recent scans of Promethei Planum.

After what seemed like hours, the silence was broken by Mark. "Uh, hey, I've got some odd results here", he said.

Richard turned away from his work and got up from his swivel chair to walk over to Mark. "Odd results? Like what?", said Richard as he examined the scan on the screen of his colleague.

Mark simply pointed at a point on a map pulled up in a window beside the scans. "They come from this point here. Right in the middle of Promethei Planum", he said.

Richard closely examined the anamolous readings, uncounsciously furrowing his brow. Mark was indeed correct, those were some odd readings. In fact, in all his life, Richard was sure that he had never seen anything like that. It was weak, but it was certainly there.

They resolved to investigate that more closely and over a few days all three of them focused their efforts at those strange readings, doing further scans and analysis but still left dumbfounded and perplexed. Eventually, Kumari decided to take the Rover out to the origin of the anomaly to inspect the site closer and with the advanced equipment of the Rover. "Rover" was the common name given the sort of manned ground vehicles meant for traversing such places as Mars whose atmosphere and environment was inhospitable to human life. Rovers varied radically in terms of size and equipment, ranging from the Particle Beam-armed Imperial War Rovers to the large and unarmed Cargo Rovers. The science Rover that Kumari drove was a large wheeled vehicle, equipped with scanning equipment.

As Richard and Mark continued working at the facility, Kumari drove across the uneven Martian landscape, reaching the origin of the anomaly after a travel devoid of anything interesting. Though that was to be expected as there was not much to see on Mars except for rocks, craters and mountains. There was an ongoing terraforming attempt, but since there was a lack of experience and expertise in that area, it was painfully slow and a lot of it was still just on the planning stage. Estimated time to completion ranged wildly from a billion to ten thousand years.

Kumari stopped the rover right on top of the anomaly. It looked like just another patch of ice-covered ground, but when Kumari activated the rover's scanning equipment, the readings revealed that it was anything but. The anomolous signal was still there, but the rover also picked up faint energy readings.

After having collected these readings, Kumari drove back to the outpost for a more thorough analysis of them. The combined three-man team spent the rest of the day analysing these new readings. They were able to draw multiple conclusions from them, the most important being that they emanated from something down under. They assumed that it was some form of structure due to the fact that the energy readings appeared artificial, though the anomaly could also simply originate from a cave.

"I think the HQ needs to have a look at this", said Richard as the work day drew to an end.

Since there was no opposition to Richard's suggestion, he sent in the data to the Imperial Mars Exploratory HQ - which, in contrast to its name, was responsible for a great many other things than simply exploration - along with a request to conduct further investigation (essentially meaning that they gain access to more expensive and specialised equipment). An hour later, a call came in from the HQ. Richard anwered it as he was the ony one left in the room.

The voice which came in from the other end was stern and gravelly. "We have analysed your data and compared it with our own scans of the same location", it said. "And have come to the conclusion to grant your request". The call then abruptly ended after a short "good luck".

The next day, they started off the workday by gathering up the necessary equipment for this second trip out to the anomaly in Promethei Planum. They were all in a good mood as they carried out the rather boring task of rummaging around for equipment. Eventually, they had gathered what they needed and proceeded to load it all onto the Rover. Despite the fact that the equipment was heavy, it hadn't been that hard for them to move to the vehicle as the equipment room was right next to the various garages, each holding a separate vehicle type.

They set out from the facility in the Rover, travelling across the oxidated surface of Mars. Though the scanning equipment on the Rover itself was unable to do a thorough enough scan of what lay beneath the surface of Mars - for reasons unknown to the trio – the equipment that they'd brought with them would undoubtedly be able to. This special equipment were a sort of robotic probes, commonly called "Diggers", due to the fact that they were very adept at digging through ground. Originally made for military purposes mainly by repurposing and modifying technology from mining probes, Diggers had proven reliable in a multitude of situations outside of their intended purpose.

Arriving up on the ice sheet beneath which lay the anomaly, they stopped. Kumari and Mark both exited the vehicle and – as was standard for anyone travelling in the type of Rover that they had been using – all three of them were equipped with sealed Hostile Environment Suits (HES).

Kumari and Mark brought out the probe from the back cargo hold of the Rover, setting it down on the white ice-covered ground. "Alright, this little guy's ready to go", said Mark over the com channel that they were currently using after having put it in place on the ground.

"Understood, activating the probe now", said Richard over the com from the seat of the Rover. They had "attached" the probe to the Rover. It would be sending and receiving signals from the manned vehicle and could therefore be remote controlled by Richard.

As Richard brought the probe online, Kumari re-entered the Rover to watch the readings gathered by the probe while Richard steered it. The computer screen in front of Richard shifted from displaying the outside of the Rover to show the line of sight of the probe. Mark was still outside, watching as the probe began digging into the ice. It quickly tore through and burrowed deeper into the ground as Mark went into the Rover as well.

The probe's screen did not show much of use and Richard instead relied on the position of the probe as relayed to the Rover, in addition to the point of origin of the anomaly. Kumari was deeply absorbed with her own task, attentively observing the continuously updating readings sent up from the probe.

"The readings from the anomaly are getting stronger", she said over the com since the Rover was not filled with air and was thus unconducive to normal speech.

"And the probe's getting farther down", said Mark. "Wonder what's down there".

After some time of the probe digging farther and farther downwards, Richard stopped it. "What is this? Metal?", he said whilst studying the video-feed from the probe. It was no longer displaying ice nor dirt, but a cold light gray surface.

"Looks like we just hit jackpot", said Mark. The Rover was filled with a tense silence. The probe had encountered a solid metal wall, something which was too straight to have been formed through natural means. As the probe mined through the light gray metal, it collected samples of it for later analysis as well.

"Wait a minute, stop", said Kumari suddenly. Richard complied and stopped the probe. "Tilt its view upwards", she added.

Richard did so, and what they saw was most astonishing. There were clear lights of some form of greenish energy embedded in the light gray metal.

"I think we just hit the discovery of the year", said Mark.

Richard turned his gaze to Mark who sat on a seat behind him. "Do not be so quick to judge", the older man said. "We have yet to see the meat of it. This is just the gravy".

"Doesn't look that brown though does it? I'd say that's just peas embedded in bread", said Kumari.

"Well, food for thought I guess", said Richard as he shifted the gaze of the probe back down to what was under it and resumed the digging.

After some time, the light gray metal gave way to a dark cavernous chamber. The lights mounted on the probe were far from adequate in alighting the vast room beneath the probe. The probe itself did not fall through the hole which it had created as several of its arms anchored it to its current position just above the opening.

Richard switched the view of the probe to one designed for low-light environments. They still were unable to spot much though. They could see the walls and the floor of the vast chamber, though any details were much harder to discern owing to the total lack of lighting from any source other than the robotic probe.

Richard switched the probe to infrared imaging, only to find the room cold.

"Well, I think we'll have to dig deeper for the meat", said Kumari.

"Indeed, we will have to meet the meat another day", said Richard. "I suggest that we return to the observatory and relay this tasteful discovery".

"Yeah, we probably should. I think the HQ'll go bananas at this", said Kumari.

"Would you guys stop it with the food puns already?", said Mark as Richard drove the Rover away from the anomaly and the alien structure which it emanated out of and back to the Observatory.

Arriving back at the Observatory, Richard left his colleagues to put everything in order while he went to relay the discovery to the Mars HQ, doing so from the room which the three of them used as their work stations. The same gravelly male voice from before answered.

"This is the Imperial Mars HQ, go ahead", it said.

"Good day, Sir. I think me and my team have made the discovery of the year if not century", said Richard. "We investigated the previously reported anomaly with the aid of Diggers, and have discovered that the source is some sort of vast alien structure".

"...What? Are you sure?", said the voice, taking on a slightly lighter tone than before.

"Quite sure, I could send you the footage and readings which our probe has collected", said Richard, just as the door to the room opened, allowing admittance to Mark and Kumari.

"Please do", said the voice of the man on the other hand.

Richard turned away from his computer with its inbuilt com system, and to his two colleagues. "You picked that up, right? Upload the information which we gathered to the HQ".

"Will do", said Kumari.

They proceeded to upload the information, and after some time, a voice came in from the other end once again. However, this voice was much different than the previous one. It was a cold and professional female voice, which at the same time appeared indifferent and threatening. "This might very well be the discovery of the decade", said the voice. "However, I will have to ask you all to keep this under wraps. By order of the Imperial Secret Intelligence Service, everything related to this anomaly is from now on under Level 0 Classification. Do not speak of the existence of this incident or in any way relay the events surrounding the anomaly at Promethei Planum. Not even with each other. Failure to comply will result in immediate termination. This will remain so unless you are notified of any change. Until then, this conversation never took place and there was never an anomaly at Promethei Planum. Good day".

* * *

><p><strong>Earth<strong>

The Prime Minister of the Imperial Federation was sitting in his office. He was not in a good mood, nor had he had a particularly good day. It started out with a multitude of complaints from several MPs over a great many of his decisions and right now he was reviewing a report from the Imperial Secret Intelligence Service (ISIS) about a possible breach in the Imperial security and anti-espionage agencies.

The weather outside mirrored his state of mind. Throughout the whole day, the city of London had been subjected to an awfully heavy downpour of rain, and it did not look like it was going to end anytime soon. The Prime Minister threw a glance at the window to his right. One could see constant drops of water pounding against the windows, and the sky outside was dark and filled with clouds.

As he turned back to the data pad in front of him, the PM sighed. The data pad indicated that he still had more than half of the report left. He was really not looking forward to trudging through the rest of it, but it was not as if he had any excuse to not do so. He really wanted an excuse to do something else, or just going home for the day. But he was a work-minded man and would not do so, despite his bad mood and lack of sleep.

As if on cue, a beep sounded from his desk. The PM laid down the data pad and pressed down a button on the desk, then spoke through a microphone mounted into it. "Who is it?", he said.

"Chairman Claire Cross wants to see you, Sir", said a voice through a speaker mounted into the desk as well.

This was most confounding to the PM. Why did the Chairman of ISIS want to see him right now? It couldn't be about the breach in Imperial security could it? He decided that it was for the best to ask first.

"For what purpose?", he said through the microphone.

"Classified", was the answer that he got from the speakers. He asked the man to clarify what level, at which the voice replied: "Level 0".

The PM sighed, it could possibly be in regards to the security breach. However, he weighed his alternatives and came to the conclusion that it at least was an excuse for him to lay down the data pad and possibly finish it tomorrow. "Very well, send her in", he said.

There was a pause from the other end before the voice answered. "Uh, Sir, she says she wants to see you in a more safer location somewhere in the ISIS HQ".

The PM scoffed, what location could possibly be safe now that the security had been breached? He doubted that it would be safer in the HQ of ISIS than in his own office. Since the security breach was in ISIS, the PM justifiably believed so and therefore also said thus to the man on the other side and ordered the Chairman to see him right then and there in his office.

Shortly thereafter, the handle of the wooden door to his office was pulled down. The door opened up outwards, and in strode Chairman Cross. "Please, take a seat", said the PM. Cross did so, but she did not look happy with the situation as she sat down on a chair on the opposite side of the desk.

"Now, what was this Level 0 stuff all about?", said the PM.

"Before I start, are you certain that this room is secure?", said Cross, the cross expression on her face never leaving it.

"Far more secure than your ISIS locales from what I know. Now could you please drop the subject and go ahead with it?"

The ISIS Chairman gave a frustrated sigh, but nevertheless did so. "Just recently, some of our exploratory observatories on Mars have discovered an anomaly in Promethei Planum. Recent footage gathered by the Martian South Pole Observatory reveals the origin of the anomaly to be some sort of alien facility buried under the surface".

"Are you sure that it is alien though? Could it not just be an unusual cave formation or an elaborate hoax?", said the PM.

"No. It is alien, and the anomolous signal does not entirely make sense. We can uncover that part of it is created by radiation, but the rest of it is of unknown makeup. I suggest that we outfit a covert expedition and search through the whole facility".

"Is that really all that necessary? Why do we not just reveal it to all of humanity? There's an upcoming meeting with the League of Nations which would be an excellent opportunity".

Cross shook her head. "And what do you think that would do? It will result in a frantic race to the facility, one which could potentially lead to war or simply the loss of the facility", she said. "On the other hand, if we were to investigate it by ourselves, we could attain a huge advantage for ourselves and no one would be any wiser as to how".

"You present a compelling argument", said the PM. There was a delay as he thought his decision over before continuing. "Very well, I want you to set up a force to investigate this 'anomaly'. Covertly".

Cross suddenly lit up, the cross expression being totally swept away and gone. "Thank you, Sir", she said. The Chairman of ISIS stood up and walked out of the office, leaving the PM with nothing to do but to read the data pad still lying on his desk. However, the PM was not in the mood for that and instead decided to go and take a cup of tea. As he did so, he mused over the fact that Cross was a known coffee drinker. Coffee was a drink which the PM associated with the French and the Americans.

* * *

><p>It was the usual day at a subsection of the Roman Intelligence Service in Nicaea, specifically the section devoted to covert activity within the Imperial Federation. Personnel were working away at their stations as usual, and so was the man in charge of all of it as well, Alexios Doukas. He was looking through a bunch of papers regarding India when one of the personnel came into his office through the automatic door and dropped a data pad on his desk.<p>

"You should take a look at this", said the pad-dropper, a man who was unremarkable except for the clear green ocular implant which replaced his right eye. "There's some strange resource-allocations over in Northern Canada".

Alexios raised an eyebrow but said nothing as the man walked back to his station. He picked up the data pad and read through it. After having done so, he found himself wondering why such vast resources were being allocated to a place right in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing of value there, not what they knew. However, Alexios came to the conclusion that there was something of value there, but what could it be? He did not know the answer to that q uestion, and therefore decided to find out, sending orders to an agent who was not occupied with a task.

Shortly thereafter though, he spotted a woman running across the room right outside his office where the rest of the staff had their work station. The woman was running straight for his office, with a data pad in hand. The door slid open automatically, allowing her to walk without pause up to Alexios's desk. "Sir, I think you need to hear this", she said as she dropped the data pad on the desk. When given an inquiring look from Alexios, the woman said, "A conversation we picked up in the Imperial PM's office. I would say it is of top priority".

Alexios simply nodded and activated the sound file on the data pad. Voices started talking, first just the PM and his aide where the most important piece of information was the statement of something of Level 0 Classification, the highest there is in the Imperial Federation. However, after that it became much more interesting, not the least because it was a conversation between the Imperial PM and the Chairman of ISIS. After having listened to the recording, Alexios was simply stunned.

"This is...It is the find of the century!", he said to no one in particular. Turning his attention back to the woman in front of him, he said, "You can return to your station, I will take this up with Constantinople".

* * *

><p><strong>Constantinople, Purple League Facility<strong>

The room was rather small, at least from what one would expect for the meeting of delegates of such high-esteemed states as the members of the Purple League were. It was a rather comfortable room, vaguely rectangular and with a large round wooden table in the middle. The room itself was clear lit with electric lights mounted on an old-fashioned chandelier, the illumination from it revealing the smooth purple colour of the wallpaper.

"Are we all agreed on this course of action?", said the head of this Purple League meeting, which happened to be the Roman delegate. As the head of this meeting, the Roman delegate sat at one end of the room, opposite the brown wooden doors which were the normal entrance.

"The United Nations of Greater Austria is fully behind this course of action", said the Austrian delegate.

"As is the German Empire", said the German delegate.

"Poland is in agreement. The Imperial Federation needs to be taken down a peg", said the Polish delegate.

"Lithuania is in agreement as well, and agrees with the Polish sentiment", said the Lithuanian delegate.

What some uninformed individuals might find curious is how the Polish and Lithuanian parts of the Commonwealth both have a tendency to act relatively independent of each others, with – among other things – separate delegates to the Purple League. However, they are far from as divided as they appear and due to common interests tend to act as one, especially in the face of foreign aggression.

After the major powers followed the smaller members of the Purple League, including – but not limited to – countries such as Ethiopia, Yemen, Oman and Romania.

* * *

><p>"Breaking news, sources tell us that Imperial Federation explorers have discovered an alien facility on Mars which the Imperial Federation has then tried to hide and exploit for its own benefit. Public outcry followed this revelation, and there are calls for the sitting PM to resign. However, the Imperial Federation has agreed to a proposal by the Purple League to form an international expedition for the uncovering of the mysterious facility on Mars".<p>

* * *

><p><strong>Mars<strong>

It was not another day at the Imperial Martian South Pole Observatory. Richard Eastley was not sitting at his desk as usual with a cup of tea in hand. He, as well as his colleagues Mark and Kumari, had been selected to be part of the international expedition meant to uncover and investigate the alien facility which they had discovered just a few months earlier.

While the Level 0 Classification put on the anomaly had been an unwelcome surprise, Richard had not been that bothered by it. Besides, it had been lifted now that someone had leaked it all to the public anyway, so it did not really matter. Not that he had expected ISIS to be able to keep such a huge discovery under wraps.

Right now, Richard was pulling on a Hostile Environment Suit in one of several changing rooms present in the observatory. Mark and Kumari had already put on their suits and were down at the garage. Richard was fairly amused by their eagerness and rushed manners, as there had been no need to hurry at all. They would still not be allowed to leave for some time regardless of how fast they were all down in the garage and ready to head out.

They would receive a signal when to go, which would be timed with the arrival of the international expedition from Earth. Richard finished putting on the HES and then exited the changing room, making his way to the garage up on the floor above. As he passed through smooth undecorated white corridor after smooth undecorated white corridor, Richard met the other personnel in the observatory going about their usual business, though some expressed disappointment that they had not been chosen to take part in the international expedition. Others wished him good luck and congratulated him on the discovery of the anomaly.

After some time, Richard came up in front of a lift which would take him to the garage. He pushed a button on the side of the lift, opening up the doors and allowing him to enter it. The elevator was empty, the only person present inside it being himself. Normally he would take the stairs as the lift had a tendency to be crowded, but Richard could not be bothered to take the steps today.

The lift chimed as it reached Richard's destination. The doors slid open, revealing the garage with its myriad of vehicles all fitted for operations in the harsh environment of Mars. At the far right end of the garage, near the vehicle exit, Richard could see Kumari and Mark standing by a large white Rover with stains of oxidated dirt all around, doing nothing in particular.

He walked over to his colleagues, navigating around all the various vehicles present in the garage. "Well, took you some time", said Mark.

"There is no immediate need for hurry. We are not supposed to head out until about...one hour", said Richard, checking the inbuilt clock in his suit for the time. "I assume that you have got everything in order?"

"Yup", said Kumari. "Though I think at least some of it won't be needed since the international expedition is supposed to bring cutting-edge tech. We could just borrow their equipment".

"If they'd let us, that is", said Mark in his usual laid-back tone, but with undertones of suspicion.

Richard sighed. "They will, Mark. It is an _international_ expedition. Not a national one".

They continued on like that, discussing desultory topics while waiting for the signal to move out. After a while, it finally came, and their response was swift. They all entered the Rover and then sped off towards Promethei Planum.

Arriving at the anomaly site, they found the international expedition already set up. Pre-fabricated structures were set up all over the place and there were people walking about as well. Richard could see that there were not only scientists and explorers there but also dig crews and special operatives. Large instruments were being set up as well, the most eye-catching of which being a variety of digging equipment.

They stopped the Rover beside one of the many pre-fabricated structures and then exited their vehicle. A man dressed in a type of suit typical for construction, demolition and digging personnel happened to stand only a few metres away. Richard went up to him and asked, "How long will it take to get down to the structure".

"A few days", said the man. "You're part of the science team I guess?".

Richard nodded. "Yes, I assume that we are supposed to utilise one of these pre-fabs while you dig?"

"Correct", said the man. "I don't know all the details of what you're supposed to do, though, so you're better off asking at the HQ o'er there". He pointed a hand encased in a thick white glove at one of the pre-fabricated buildings to his right. That structure was only remarkable in the fact that it had a multitude of antennas and paraboles mounted onto its roof.

They (Richard, Mark and Kumari) did as the man had suggested, and were assigned a structure and objectives by those in charge of the expedition. They did not do much the following days, mostly providing those who had arrived with the expedition the information that they had already gathered on the anomaly as well as the footage from the Digger.

The dig crew worked diligently throughout the days, and actually managed to complete the dig in record time. The day that they had dug all the way down was when the science teams would finally do their work. Those scientists and explorers attached to the international expedition all made their way down the shaft that had been dug through the ice and the Martian surface. When they arrived at the bottom of the shaft, they saw members of the dig crew working away at getting open what looked like a door made out of metal.

They were using laser to cut through the metal, and did seem to be nearly finished. "So this is the entrance?", said Mark to one of the workers part of the team working on cutting through the door right in front of them. The woman was standing on the side and observing though, and not actively participating.

"Probably", said the woman. "We have found several other openings on other sides of the facility, but they did not look like they were meant to be a main entrance. One of the openings looked like a hangar bay actually".

After some time, the workers had finished their work, and removed the rectangular block that they cut out of the rectangular door. They placed it to the side of the entrance. Richard tried to peer into the darkness inside the facility, but could not see much. Half of the soldiers who were accompanying the expedition went into the facility first. The other half stayed up on ground level to defend the camp from any possible threat.

"All clear! Send in the science teams", Richard heard one of the soldiers shout. The group of scientists and explorers moved into the pitch dark facility. Kumari activated the lights mounted onto her HES. Richard and Mark did the same, followed thereafter by everybody else. What the lights revealed from the darkness was a large chamber. The architecture was definitely not human, matching no known human styles.

There were walkways higher up in the chamber that they were in, as well as consoles on the ground floor. From where Richard was standing, with his back turned to the way they had entered, he had walls made of some sort of light gray metal to his right and left. Straight in fron of him there was another door, similar to the one they had cut through. The consoles present on the ground floor were both at one of the two doors. Presumably, they were used to open the doors.

That was what he could see from the illumination granted by the HES-mounted lights. It was far from adequate however, and minute details were hard to discern.

Suddenly, a voice called out further ahead. It was rough and Richard assumed that it came from one of the soldiers. "Damn it! Could somebody access one of those consoles? Some light would be nice". The accent revealed that the speaker was not a native English speaker. Probably a Greek or a Scandinavian. Richard could never really distinguish foreign accents.

They moved further into the facility, though a pair of scientists stayed behind to examine the console beside the door that they had entered through.

"Hey, what're those circuits in the wall?", said Mark as they walked through the chamber on the way to the door at the opposite side. Richard threw a glance at one of the walls, but i was hard to really see anything in this darkness. He pointed his right arm at the wall, hoping that the light shining from it would be enough to illuminate whatever Mark was talking about.

True enough, the light revealed some strange lines engraved into the wall. It did look like it was either some sort of power circuit or just some form of lighting. Though the fact that it was alien made Richard consider the fact that it maybe was both.

Without warning, the door at the end lit up in a blue light and then began to open, sliding upwards and out of sight. Most of the soldiers went through the opening. The door shut after them before Richard could get a good look at what was behind as there seemed to be something more than just darkness. The blue light faded from the door shortly after it had shut.

As the trio came up to the door, they saw that a squad of soldiers stood in front of it. When asked why they were not allowed to proceed, the lead soldier said, "We need to make sure that it is safe to proceed first".

So they waited, in darkness illuminated only by the arm- and head-mounted lights on the HESs worn by all members of the science teams. After what seemed like an eterenity, the whole chamber/hallway that they were in suddenly lit up in a clear blue light. "Well, that was unexpected", said Richard. He looked around the room and in particular the walls. The blue light was emanating from the walls, and those lines in the wall were indeed lights.

"Seems like someone managed to reactivate the place", said Kumari. "Though my suit has just picked up radiation coming from the next room".

"Mine too", said Mark. "These are some weird aliens. Putting radioactive stuff in such places. No wonder there's nobody here".

"Or maybe it is simply a containment breach?", said Richard. None of them were particularly worried though, their HES were designed to protect its wearer against hazards such as these among other things as the design was originally meant for the military.

Mark was about to answer when the lead soldier guarding the door in front of them spoke up. "Alright, we've reactivated power. Your HESs should be enough to protect you from the radioactive generator right in the middle of the room beyond this opening".

"What?", said Mark, but did not elaborate as the door slid up into the ceiling and the myriad of scientists and explorers began moving into the chamber ahead. It was quite large, but also empty, the item of most significance contained therein being what they were told was the power core of the alien facility. It was a large cylindrical thing which glowed a bluish colour. There was a ring of walkways around the power core as well as several consoles and steps leading up to the ring. There were several doors on the sides of the vaguely cylindrical chamber which led to a multitude of other places.

"Wow, that's something you don't see every day", said Kumari.

"I concur, that is certainly nothing of human design", said Richard.

"Well, now we know where the signal came from", said Mark. "Probably".

They did attempt to go through one of the various doors leading to other parts of the alien facility, but the soldiers there did not allow them on the grounds that those had not yet been secured. However, there were still a few other rooms which had been deemed secure, the most important of which being the hangar, and what seemed to be some sort of control room for the whole facility.

As the trio entered the hangar of the alien facility, they heard a woman cry out in Hungarian which the inbuilt translator of their suits translated.

"Hey! Over here, I think I've found something interesting", said the woman from across the hangar. "Some unknown substance, my scanner can't detect its makeup".

Quite some people went over to investigate what the Hungarian woman had found, including the trio of Richard, Mark and Kumari.

"Looks like this could become the discovery of the century!", said Mark as they walked across the alien hangar.

* * *

><p><em>Codex: History of the Imperial Federation: Modern Era: The Imperial Federation is a vast multi-national conglomerate consisting of a quarter of the total land area of Earth. It is a continuation of the British Empire and is the result of a reorganisation of said Empire. The British Empire was declared defunct on 1914 with the Imperial Federation taking its place shortly thereafter in 1915.<em>

_The greatest problem regarding the formation of the Imperial Federation was the question of the then-British colonies in Africa and Asia. This does not include the former dominions whose status had been resolved years before. It was eventually settled to gradually incorporate the colonies into the Federation. An idea proposed by Lord George Anderson which would make the division of seats in the Imperial Senate depend on GDP was accepted as a solution to the Indian and African problems, brought about by their greater population._

_In the initial years of its existence, the Imperial Federation was quite a confused mess with a lot of important things needed to be sorted out. Luck was with them though as they managed to set everything straight in 1918, just a few months before the outbreak of the First World War._

_The Imperial Federation joined the War on the side of the Entente following the violation of Belgian neutrality by Germany. During the war, the Federation deployed its navy and army around the world to combat the Central Powers alongside the forces of the other members of the Entente. At that time, the Imperial Navy was the largest navy on Earth and its immense power was decisive to the Entente war effort._

_Following the end of the First World War in 1922, the Imperial Federation entered a period of peace, unwilling to get involved in new conflicts after the devastation brought about by the War. Still, Imperial forces were among those forces deployed to Russia during the Russian Civil War to prevent the Bolsheviks from seizing control. This attempt failed as by the end of the Russian Civil War in 1925, the Bolsheiks were in control of Russia._

_During the rest of the interwar period the Imperial Federation did little in regards to the outside world. Instead, it focused on developning its lands. Unfortunately, the Great Depression struck and put an end to those plans._

_While the Coup in Germany in 1933 was shocking and unexpected, there was nothing that the Federation could do about it nor was it willing to do anything about it. It did grant amnesty to the Duke of Luxemburg who had fled from Germany during the Coup, but not much more._

_Imperial unwillingness to go to war during this period is evident in its handling of the events building up to the Second World War 2. Germany was able to convince – with little effort – the former Entente to allow Danzig to hold a referendum on reunion with Germany. The Danzigers voted overwhelmingly in favour of reunion and Danzig was allowed to rejoin Germany._

_German rearmament and remilitarisation of the Rheinland was not opposed either. The Anschluss of Luxemburg to Germany in 1942 was much more controversial however. When Germany made their conditions to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1943, it was too much for the Federation to stay on the sidelines. The Imperial Federation, along with France and Austria, made it clear that they would go to war to stop Germany from annexing Polish land._

_The jingoistic government of Germany – eager for a war – invaded Poland despite these warnings and in 1944, the Imperial Federation declared war on Germany and the Axis along with the rest of the allies._

_Following the defeat of every member of the Axis except for the Soviet Union and Japan in 1949, the Imperial Federation, along with every country part of the allies apart from the PLC and the ERE, signed a peace treaty with the defeated Axis members in addition to a separate treaty with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union agreed to a white peace with the Imperial Federation as it was in no shape to fight against all of the allies. Japan, however, stubbornly held its ground, which eventually led to the deployment of two Atomic Bombs against two cities on the Japanese home islands by the Imperial Federation in 1950. This was shortly thereafter followed by a Japanese surrender._

_Continue on to page 2._

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong> _The quote at the start is Greek and translates as "Let the die be cast", although the latin translation is Alea iacta est. Yes, that famous quote was originally in Greek._


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Notes: **_Back again, after an unintended hiatus._

_Again, thanks to NoMoreSanity for beta reading and helping with the fic._

**Disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect.**

**Claimer: I do own my Original Creations (OCs).**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 4: Long-term Consequences<strong>

_"Austria est imperare orbi universo"(A.E.I.O.U.) – Motto of the Austrian Space Navy_

2125

Following the discovery of a facility built by a mysterious alien race and its contents, humanity left its cradle. The data discovered in the outpost allowed humanity to advance its space technology by centuries. However, a not insignificant amount of this technology required an element hitherto unknown to Man. This element was given the name "Element Zero", due to a multitude of unlikely reasons and circumstances, including the fact that it possessed the intriguing property of being capable of changing the mass of objects, wholly defying the rules set by many scientifical theories.

Over the decades since this discovery, not only has humanity as a whole made a rapid expansion out into space, but scientists have still been having headaches over the concept of "Mass Effect". Nevertheless, the expansion of human space and advancement of human technology continues on regardless.

However, despite all of these advances, all is not calm and peaceful. The last real war was a long time ago, and the old generation has died away. The new generation has not experienced real war, and thus they do not know the terrible thing that is war. Over the course of humanity's experience in space, there have been multiple diplomatic incidents and border skirmishes. The new frontier and the race for new territory that it brings with it has created a very volatile political situation in human space.

There have been a multitude of situations which could have led to a devastating war. Conflict has only been narrowly avoided by mediation from the League of Nations. But the League is an institution created for Earthly situations and is not fit for the new frontier. Its powers are simply too limited, and it is supported relatively few states, the most prominent of those being the Nordic Union.

With this increased volatileness and competition, bloc politics have begun coming into prominence. Though the blocs are old, they have never been as important as in the current day, which is a time when you need steadfast allies. The five blocs are all in competition with each other, and pessimists say it is only a matter of time before some spark ignites the powder keg.

The one positive thing that one could say coming from all of this is the Union of America properly coming out of isolation. However, it has quickly joined and contributed to the volatileness of the political situation.

With this instable situation comes a myriad of clandestine projects. Hidden bases have been established by all the blocs in far-flung locations and on out-of-way worlds, the existence of many being wholly unknown to most people and the things conducted in those facilities totally unknown as well.

However, still not everything is a furtive mess of clandestine scheming. Trade is plentiful throughout human space due to the network of Warp Gates connecting human space. This network allows fast tranfer between systems not part of the Mass Relay network, as well as bypassing the many choke-points created by the Relay network.

Warp tech has been constantly developed to reduce human reliance on the Relay network. Mobile Warp Gates have been used to establish outposts in empty space and systems unreachable by using the Relay network. Curiously enough though, relatively few habitable planets have been found this way in comparison to simply using the Relays.

Although the future of humanity is uncertain, many still look towards the future with hope.

* * *

><p><em>Citadel Exploration Vessel, Shining Light<em>

Dalia T'Conia was walking down one of the many corridors on the Shining Light, intent on reaching the bridge of the ship. She was not in the most hopeful of moods. They had been sent out to map-out and explore unknown space, as well as investigating what was on the other side of an as of the present unopened Mass Relay.

Unfortunately, the exploration of unknown space part had been depressingly eventless. They had not come across any habitable planets. In fact, they had come across few stars with solid planets in their orbits at all. On the other hand, they had found quite some new gas giants, which would be useful in the future as resting points for other ships passing through. Still, Dalia did like the fact that they were not in Citadel space, but out in the great unknown. Far away from the Council and the stressful existence in the most economically and militarilly strongest power in the known galaxy. Dalia had fleeting suspicions that the Council did not want her around, and that they therefore had sent her to a place which did not hold anything of great interest, but she dismissed those thoughts.

Nevertheless, despite all of this, they really had as of the present come across nothing of any particular interest on their voyage to Relay 314. The sleek silvery gray walls of the corridor were calming in appearance though, and Dalia held onto the hope that today would be different from the other days which had already passed. It was times like these that she slightly regretted ending her tenure as a Commando. However, she had no intentions of returning to her prior profession, largely due to her acquired dislike of the Council.

The door to the bridge slid open, revealing half of the crew working away at their stations. The two pilots of the ship, an asari named Scylla T'Mirtis and a turian called Prorsus Cogitarimpotens, were fully occupied with their work in steering the ship right and making scans as they passed along. The chief of security, a turian by the name of Miles Vexillum, was standing up by what was technically the place assigned to the captain but which could actually be utilised for a multitude of uses, including Vexillum's profession. This also meant that he stood one or two metres behind the pilots and could easily observe what they were doing as well as exchange information and hold conversations.

Dalia noticed that Vexillum and Prorsus had both been engrossed in a casual discussion before she had entered the bridge. The two turians had ended it shortly after the bridge door had slid open. As Dalia walked up to the captain's position, she was greeted by Vexillum who stepped aside to allow her to assume her position.

"I see that you're finally up and about", said Vexillum. His voice carried the usual flanging tone of turians, and was actually quite reminiscient of the turian Councilor's nasal voice.

"Yeah, anything of interest?", said Dalia.

The turian shifted a bit, and then sighed. "No, nothing. But, we've recently entered a new and unexplored system. I wager that we might get lucky this time. And besides, even if we don't, we still need to get to the Mass Relay".

Dalia sighed, "True, but I was hoping that we would find something more along the way".

The bridge was small, but it had great visibility due to most of it being transparent, which could be afforded on such a ship as the Shining Light since it was not a combat ship. Dalia stared out of the ship, taking in the deep black void of space. They were not close to any of the planets in the system, which made distant stars the only thing filling in the dark expanse. It was a calming sight, and did serve to slightly calm Dalia. It was not as if her life was at stake.

She was broken out of her reverie by Scylla who announced that they had finished scans of the system. Scanning a system they entered was a routine practice which had been begun as soon as the Light had entered the system.

"What did you find?", said Dalia. Scylla was about to answer when the doors to the bridge abruptly opened. The one who had triggered the opening of the door was the only salarian on the ship, Vaelin Werder, assigned to take care of a wide variety of duties, all of them related to science. Since Dalia was not that interested in such things, she in actuality did not actually know what Werder did, having forgotten that information some time ago.

"Ah, good thing that you're all here. Just finished scans of the system", said Werder, delivering with quite some speed as well as eagerness.

Dalia sighed, though with a smile on her lips. "What've you got?"

"Well, this system is made up of four planets. Three of them gas giants, but fourth one has a solid surface, presumably rock, though from my readings there is also a large amount of oxidated material there as well", said Werder.

Dalia nodded. "Alright, we'll head for the rocky planet".

* * *

><p><em>Ares Prime, Purple League Outpost<em>

The room was not exactly bustling with activity, but all its stations were filled by personnel. Its style was very spartan, the walls being a dull gray and the only objects present being those critical to the functions of the room itself. One of those was to make routine scans of the unimaginatively named Ares System. The purpose of these routine system-wide scans was to watch out for anyone entering the system, especially unwelcome intruders, due to the fact that the Ares System was located on one of the outer edges of the Roman Empire. However, the existence of this outpost was secret to the public. Officially, there was nothing remarkable in the Ares System at all.

The man in charge of this routine scanning – or rather, observing the results of them – was named Bohumil Šťastierybár, though friends simply called him Milek. As made obvious by his name, he was not Roman. Bohumil came from the United States of Greater Austria, and was a Slovak. Before joining this joint Purple League effort which the Ares Outpost was, Bohumil used to be in the Austrian Navy, holding virtually the same position as now. But it was a position which he was comfortable with and which also was very vital, no matter how boring it may at times be, so he did not complain.

The great technological advances was another thing which he did not find negative, though they did simplify his work. While many feared that all this new technology would be used for destructive ends, he was of a different opinion. Unlike many of his compatriots, Bohumil had faith in humanity. He looked to the future with optimism.

However, there was one thing which constantly soiled his mood. That thing was the Union of America, a trans-national organisation for all of the Americas for which Bohumil harboured a great dislike. When he was young, he had once lived a quiet life on a peaceful world with his parents and siblings, wholly unconcerned with the greater scheme of things. That peaceful existence came to an end after his parents were killed in one of the many border skirmishes on Bohumil's home planet.

That incident had nearly provoked a war between the Purple League and the Union of America. It had been averted though, but only barely, and many times, Bohumil found himself wishing that war had not been averted, as ever since that day he harboured an intense want of revenge against the Americans. But nevertheless, he would probably never be able to act on this urge.

As Bohumil was relaxedly looking through the most recent scans, he suddenly froze up and his eyes widened. This lasted for such a short time that it was barely noticeable to any unattentive onlooker, but Bohumil's calm demeanour remained wholly shattered. He checked and re-checked the system scan, seeking to confirm that what he thought the anomaly was was actually in touch with reality. His notion was proven correct. There was a ship of unknown make and origin present in the Ares System. It was assuredly of alien design, seeing as the scanner could not locate a matching craft in the database. What it could identify though was that it did use Element Zero, as well as other more miscellaneous pieces of information.

The foreign spacecraft was travelling towards Ares Prime at high speeds, ignoring the other planets in the system, though various signals emanated from it, which was likely it simply scanning the planets which it passed by. Bohumil decided that such a thing must be brought to the attention of the Commander of the outpost, a hungarian man called Trúfalý József.

As if on a cue, the door to the room opened and in walked the aforementioned hungarian with a steaming hot cup of tea in hand. He was about to sit down at his desk, which was slightly elevated above the rest of the room to give him an excellent view of what his subordinates were doing, when Bohumil called out to him.

"Trúfalý, Sir!", said Bohumil, catching József's attention.

The rugged Hungarian put the cup down at his desk and proceeded to walk over to Bohumil with a slight limp.

"What've ya got, Milek?", said Jószef, off-handedly pulling out a piece of cloth and cleaning the ancient looking pair of glasses which constantly decorated his face.

"There's some anomaly here in this most recent scan", said Bohumil, pointing at the screen displaying the scanning results. "I think it's an alien spacecraft of some kind. It matches no known human ships".

Jószef nodded, bringing up a hand to rub his chin whilst doing so. "And, you're sure that it's alien and not just some new ship?"

Bohumil shook his head. "I won't know for sure 'til it gets closer, but I'm very sure that it's not human. Also, it has been making scans of the system. Especially this planet, and especially in the general location of this outpost".

"What?", said Jószef, looking at Bohumil for confirmation. The Slovak nodded. The Hungarian composed himself quickly after that, though still took some time in apparent contemplation before saying, "Well, we can't have that. We'll just have to shoot them down with the Ion Cannon, then go in and take a look". After the look that Bohumil gave him, Jószef added, "Don't worry, we're just going to force them to crash-land. Would not make a good first impression if they were aliens to kill them all. Shooting them down is a different story. They're intruding on our territory, so we've actually got a reason to shoot them down. Might as well make the most of it".

Bohumil gave a forced chuckle. "Well, the Ion Cannon could do with some excercise".

"Damn right", said Jószef. "Though I would prefer a real Tesla Cannon to that dumbed-down thing we have here, I guess one can't get everything in life, eh?"

The hungarian gave a nod to Bohumil and then turned away. He called out over the room for Maksym Pomylkoyuk, the leader of the joint-purple league detachment of commandos stationed at the outpost. The Ukrainian answered in a voice that was just as loud as Jószef's. "What is it, Sir?"

Jószef's response to Maksym was a sign for the both of them to go somewhere more private. Not that it did prevent Bohumil from deducing what his superior was intending to do, but there was nothing he could do about it.

* * *

><p><em>Citadel Exploration Vessel, Shining Light<em>

They had been travelling for a while now, and were projected to arrive at the rocky planet very soon. Dalia doubted that they would find anything of value there. The chance of actually finding anything were very small, as according to Werder the atmosphere was not of the right composition, nor actually that thick. Only a species similar to the rachni could be expected to be found on such a planet, if any species at all.

There was, of course, the chance that it had been inhabitated before, and rendered uninhabitable later. On the other hand, Vexillum projected the idea that it could house a facility, drawn mostly from the slightly abnormal radio emissions which their scanners had noticed emanating from the planet. While Dalia understood the significance of that, she doubted that Vexillum's assertion was correct. After all, why not hide in the clouds of the gas giants instead? In the interference caused by the gas planets themselves, it would be incredibly difficult to notice anything at all.

Dalia was more and more overcome with the feeling that they should simply not have bothered investigating this place and instead continued on to Relay 314, but such a decision was pointless to annul now as they had nearly arrived at the rocky planet. She looked around on the bridge, the pilots were doing their job, sitting down on the lower level, and Werder was simply sitting to the left of them all, not visibly doing anything. The bridge was of a sort of turian design, one would suppose. The captain stood elevated above the rest of the bridge, though on this ship that was not as noticeable to one entering the room as to the pilots.

To her left, there was a turian-sized compartment which normally would have been used for hardware, but right now was empty. Dalia did not know why it was not utilised as it was a terrible waste having it empty like it currently was. It was big enough for her to actually be able to climb into, but since she was not a child she did not see any use for it except maybe as a place for Calcaneum or Vexillum to store extra weapons.

Speaking of which, the turian security chief just happened to enter the bridge at that moment, the doors automatically opening to allow him entry. Vexillum gave Dalia a nod when she turned around. "I'm just going to do a check of the security systems. It's not as if there's much to do", said Vexillum.

"What about Achillus? I'm sure you could do some drills", said Dalia.

Vexillum shook his head, before sitting down at the console which handled the security systems, to Dalia's right. "No, this ship is too small, and I have Achillus in the armoury right now. Cleaning the guns".

"Too small? You've got to be joking me", said Dalia.

Vexillum sighed as he began typing on the computer. "I am a soldier, not a commando".

Dalia turned away from the turian and back to her post, to discover the rocky planet now in front of her. It had an orange tint, validating Werder's supposition, and overall looked completely barren. But looks can be deceiving, something which Dalia was very well-acquainted with.

"Have you started scanning the planet?", she said.

Scylla scoffed. "Way ahead of you".

Dalia said nothing in response, preferring to let Scylla finish her work first. This time hopefully without Werder coming in and abruptly cutting her off, though that was unlikely as the salarian sat only a few metres away. Suddenly, the salarian seemed to realise something and stood up. Almost at the same time, only a few seconds after, Scylla said, "Well, scan finished, and-". She abruptly cut herself off, tensing up slightly, and her eyes widening. Werder went over to look at the scans as well.

"Hmm, massive energy signatures", said the salarian. "Cannot be natural. Must be articially made".

"What?", said Dalia. "Are you absolutely sure?"

Scylla snapped out of her shock. "He's correct, but I don't think it's a good thing. I mean, look at tha-". She abruptly cut herself off to stare at something outside the window.

Without warning, the alarms started going off in the bridge. Dalia cast a glance out through the part of the floor which was transparent as she shouted, "Why are the alarms going off?". Out through the transparent floor, she saw a pillar of blue quickly moving to hit their ship, coming from the direction of the planet.

In under a second, there was a blinding flash of white and blue, the whole craft shook and vibrated. Dalia was thrown off her feet from the blast, but managed to catch her fall. As she got up, she felt that the whole ship was moving, and the alarms were still on and blaring. "Somebody shut up that alarm", she shouted to no one in particular. Thankfully, somebody followed her order, and the annoying noise stopped, though the warning lights remained.

"Status report", said Dalia.

Prorsus was the one who answered her request. "We've lost the sleeping chambers, most of our engines and half of the crew quarters, including Werder's lab".

Dalia swore. "Can you make a safe landing on that planet?"

"We should have enough systems still active to make a controlled crash landing, yes", said Prorsus, typing away at his console as he did so. "Though it might be a bit..."

"..bumpy?", said Scylla.

"I was going to say crashy, but bumpy works", said Prorsus. "I suggest you hang on though, just in case".

Dalia nodded, sat down, and secured herself on an empty seat to her right, right beside Vexillum. As she felt the ship accelerate towards the planet, she pondered how she would be able to survive this ordeal. She knew that they were in big trouble, though was not entirely certain why they were fired upon. What was even more alarming though, was the fact that what had hit their vessel had not been a solid projectile, but a beam made out of energy. If they had somehow managed to anger a species capable of such things...Dalia did not even want to ponder the possible consequences.

The Shining Light shook as it dived down through the thin atmosphere of the planet, travelling above the uneven brown-orange surface dotted with craters and rock formations, before finally making a violent landing in a crater. The force of the impact threw Dalia forwards, only being stopped from flying off of her seat and making a violent and possibly fatal impact with some of the objects in the bridge by the security appliances which were installed into the seat.

Once they had all collected and recovered from the crash landing, they proceeded to unfasten themselves from their seats and stand up.

The first one to speak up was Prorsus. "Now who shot us down? There's nothing out here. The whole planet's uninhabitable"

"Could possibly be an outpost here", said Werder. "Maybe for scientifical and/or defensive purposes. Could be a border world. There could also be a settlement here".

"But why fire without provokation? Makes no sense", said Prorsus.

"Possibly a pre-emptive strike. Or, we might have angered whatever species lives here".

"But who lives in such a wasteland as this?"

"That's enough", said Dalia, cutting off the turian and salarian before they could continue with their argument. "What we need to do now is arm ourselves, just in case those who shot us down are not friendly. Scylla, you'll be watching the scanners for anything approaching. They're still active, right?"

"Yes", said Scylla. Dalia nodded, and then ordered the rest to go down to the armoury and acquire a weapon, leaving Dalia and Scylla alone in the bridge.

While waiting for the others to get back, Dalia wandered on and off in the bridge, occasionally asking Scylla if she had spotted anything. She sincerely hoped that if a living sentient species was behind their crash, that it was all the result of a grave misunderstanding.

Eventually, most of the crew were armed and gathered in the bridge. Everyone except for their salarian crewmember, who was not present at all, leaving it simply a gathering of asari and turians.

"Where did Werder go?", said Dalia.

"Oh, he said that he was gonna check on his lab", said Achillus. Achillus Calcaneum had been in the armoury when the blast had hit the ship, and had been very lucky to have survived it.

Dalia sighed. "Does he not realise how critical the situation is?", she muttered under her breath. "No matter, we'll just have to-"

She was cut off by a sudden exclamation from Scylla. "Ma'am, the scanners have picked up a group of objects on fast approach".

Dalia nodded. "All of you, the entrance. Scylla, stay here and watch the scanners".

The three turians in front of her all nodded and exited the bridge, making their way to the main entryway to the ship, an airlock, located not too far away. Dalia pulled out a pistol and followed after them. The bridge door closed behind her, leaving her in the short silvery corridor which lead down to a room wherein the airlock was located.

The turians had already taken up defensive positions when Dalia arrived, a testament to turian efficiency and discipline. There were few pieces available for cover, however. The room was completely open, and devoid of most objects except for the occasional console and a white bench. Dalia decided to use the corner of the corridor as her piece of cover, which though bad as it was in the line of sight of the airlock, was better than having none at all like the turians. Although Vexillum had put himself behind the white bench on the side of the room opposite the corridor which lead to the bridge, in clear view of Dalia. The bench afforded him some cover. Certainly more than Prorsus or Achillus had. Prorsus was standing to the left of the airlock, behind a very small console, which meant that he was pretty much totally exposed. Achillus was crouched down out in the open, slightly to the right of the airlock, but still in front of it.

A few tense moments passed by in silence, as they stood there and waited. Waited for something to happen. Eventually, Scylla came in over the ship-wide speakers. "There are some objects a few metres from the airlock, and on fast approach".

Dalia nodded absent-mindedly, and took a tighter grip around her pistol. She saw the turians tense up as well. However, what came next was initially a total surprise. "The objects have moved away from the airlock". Shortly after processing this new piece of information, it dawned upon her what the unknowns were doing, but it was too late.

Suddenly, a large explosion engulfed the door which they were all watching. The resultant shockwave from it was enough to throw them all off, even Vexillum who was not as close as the rest. Prorsus was thrown into the wall behind him, leaving him even more exposed on the left side of the airlock. Achillus was much less effected, though was still left stunned. Dalia was similarly unaffected.

As the smoke from the explosion started to dissipate, they noticed a figure standing in the doorway. They all aimed their weapons at it, but as the smoke dissipated and revealed it, they did not pull the trigger. The figure was stunningly similar to an asari in general form, though details were impossible to make out as it was clad in a full-covering suit which had a colour quite similar to the environment of the planet.

Still, the similarity to a asari in the body shape of the figure was striking, and caused them all to hesitate when it pulled up a strange-looking object, which bore a slight resemblance to a regular projectile weapon. However, when the figure pulled down the trigger of the weapon, what came out of it was assuredly not a projectile. Rather, it spat out a glowing purple-blue orb which proceeded to fly away at a relatively leisurely pace and strike the upper right of Achillus's leg, as well as parts of his torso.

The turian fell down with a pained groan, dropping his rifle and clutching the part where he had been hit. Dalia cast a quick glance at him, the armour had been completely molten and burned away, and the scales and flesh underneath...she turned away from the sight, but the stench of burnt flesh hung in the air. She fired off her pistol at the attacker, watching it being deflected by the barrier. The hostile turned towards her and fired its weapon, Dalia barely managed to evade the searing orb by throwing herself backwards. The purplish projectile grazed the corridor's corner, before impacting in the wall to Dalia's right.

As Dalia got up, she noticed the effect that the projectile had had on the walls. They were all charred and molten, though not as severely as Achillus's armour. She decided that it was hopeless to hold out in this small and open space. Despite the relative sluggishness of the purplish orbs, the current environment made dodging them hard, and she could see that more hostiles were entering as the first one stood aside.

Therefore, Dalia withdrew into the bridge, and though she hated leaving the turians, there was nothing she could do to ameliorate the situation since she did not want to use her biotics, being unsure if they would actually work and not wanting to put herself in the open to do so. As she entered the bridge, the bridge door slammed shut behind her. She locked the door to provide some breathing room. Scylla saw her entering, and stood up.

"What's happened?", she said. "Why are you here?"

"They are definitely aliens", said Dalia. "And hostile. It was no use staying out in the open. They have energy weapons of some kind".

"So you just left them?", said Scylla as she walked up from the pilot's seat, which was located beneath Dalia's position as such was how the ship was built.

"I had no choice. I would just get killed as well. At least here we've got a better defensive position".

Scylla nodded and pulled out her own pistol, coming up to Dalia's side and aiming at the bridge door. The area outside had mostly quietened down, though sparse voices speaking a language alien to both of them could be heard. It was certainly unnerving, knowing that the turians had been taken care of that quickly, though Dalia was not very surprised, having witnessed the capabilities of these aliens first-hand. This also meant that she knew that they were not unstoppable, despite their energy weapons. The weaponry that the aliens were using was only at its best in small and narrow spaces. In any other situation, they would not be very useful.

This was why the both of them were standing by the Captain's position, facing the bridge entrance. It put enough distance between them and the entrance that they could dodge any projectiels coming their way easily enough, though Dalia was unsure if Scylla could manage. Still, it was the best solution in this case.

Without warning, the bridge door was unlocked, indicated by the red light on it switching to green. It began sliding upwards, but had not come far when an object was rolled along the floor, through the small opening. Dalia was quick to draw a conclusion of what it was, and rolled to her right, to the left side of the bridge.

Scylla was not as swift though, and the cylindrical object detonated with a loud sound. A flash of blinding white light came at the same time as well, along with a thick gray smoke. Dalia was dazed by the explosion, though only blinded for a very short time. Recognising that she was in no position to do anything in her current state, she decided to utilise the small empty compartment to her right, praising whatever circumstances had made it so that it was empty and available for her.

She stumbled forward to the open hatch, and climbed into the compartment. It was not large, but it would have to do. Peering over the edge of the hatch, she could see Scylla stumbling out of the thick gray smoke. A projectile flew out from the now open bridge door, hitting Scylla in the neck. The asari pilot stumbled in what appeared to be drunken stupor before collapsing down to the floor.

Dalia thought she saw one of the attackers step into the bridge, causing her to duck down and ready her pistol. She waited in the cramped compartment, ready to strike if they would find her. She heard footsteps, heralding the arrival of more of the unknown assailants into the bridge. Dalia heard them conversing in a strange language, which she had never heard.

"Ítan óti óla aftá?", said one of them.

"Ti gínetai me ti sávra?", said a second voice.

Dalia heard a few more footsteps, and then another, very different voice that spoke in a tone which was completely unlike the other two.

"Es wurde sich bereits um ihn gekümmert", it said.

"Aftó afínei éna", said the second voice. Suddenly, it yelled out, "Diadóste éxo! Prépei na eínai kápou edó".

This was answered by a chorus of, "Nai, kýrie!"

Dalia heard the aliens start to move again. Many of the footsteps became mroe and more distant, but a few were still trampling around the bridge. She heard them occasionally say something, but it was to her totally incomprehensible and only served as an easy way for her to guess where in the bridge they were. As she expected them to search the compartment that she was in, she held onto her pistol.

Soon enough, the aliens searching the bridge eventually came over to her side, coming close to discovering her many times, but not quite doing so. However, despite this, Dalia was sure that she was going to be discovered, and did therefore not relax. The sound of footsteps came closer to her, before abruptly stopping somewhere close.

A tense silence descended upon the bridge. Dalia wondered whether she should risk it to peek out, or not. If she could incapacitate the aliens on the bridge, and then take their weapons, then she might be able to fend them off with the help of her biotics. Though this plan hinged on the aliens not having any biotics of their own and thus being uprepared for such things, Dalia had not seen or heard any biotics used at all, so she was willing to make the gamble.

Slowly, she rose up from her crouching position, only to find her face-to-face with one of the aliens. The alien aimed a small and thin weapon at her. It looked somewhat like a sort of pistol. However, before it could use its weapon, Dalia sent the alien flying backwards with a biotic throw. It flew across the bridge, and impacted with the console on the other side. The same console that Vexillum had been sitting at earlier.

Dalia walked out onto the bridge, to locate the other attacking hostile. She found it, standing on the lower pilot deck, taking aim at her. She formed a biotic barrier, just in time to deflect the black projectiles which the alien was shooting towards her. She fired her pistol at the vaguely brown-orange clad assailant, though failed to break through its barrier.

She threw a biotic throw at this second hostile as well, dazing it. By this time however, the first alien had recovered, and was quickly taking down her barriers with sustained fire from a projectile weapon. Dalia rolled down to the pilot's station, utilising the various railings as well as the walls as cover. She threw a glance at her left, to see the alien which had been down here slowly recover. She managed to force it to retreat with several well-placed pistol shots followed up by another biotic throw, but not before the alien had managed to destroy her biotic barrier.

Dalia was about to form a new one when she felt something hit her neck. She felt sluggish as she turned around to look at where the shot had come from while simultaneously bringing up a hand back to her neck to pull out whatever had lodged itself there. She gripped a hand around whatever object had hit her, and pulled it out, something which was surprisingly very easy.

She saw the figure who had initially appeared in the airlock stare right at her, with some sort of weapon in hand. However, Dalia found it harder and harder to make out any details or actually move at all. She felt herself barely struggling against collapsing. As her vision became to become more and more unclear and darker, Dalia took a few shambling steps forward, attempting to lift her pistol at the brownish figure in front of her.

All of her efforts were futile however, and eventually her vision blackened out.

* * *

><p><em>Codex: History of the United Nations of Greater Austria: Austria (More formally: The United Nations of Greater Austria) as we know it today came into being following the end of the First World War. The old Austro-Hungarian double monarchy was on the verge of collapse following the drawn out war. It would have collapsed too if it had not been for the intervention of the Roman Empire.<em>

_The Roman Empire pushed for Austria-Hungary to remain as a state, though greatly reformed and reorganised. The other powers of the Entente, mainly Italy, wanted to cut Austria up into many small states. The Roman Empire, fearing a destabilisation of the whole Balkans, was adamant in its opposition to this. Since only the relatively weak power of Italy wanted Austria dismembered, it was no hard feat to convince the other powers to let Austria remain, though as said, greatly reformed._

_Roman troops moved in to secure the rest of Austria (as they had already occupied a large part of it during the course of the war) and stabilise the situation to prevent nationalists from seizing control and breaking it up into pieces. Eventually, the situation was stabilised, though Austria was still reduced in territory._

_Bosnia-Hercegovina was handed off to Serbia along with parts of southern Vojvodina. Soutern Tirol was given to Italy, along with the Austrian Littoral. Bukovina was handed to Romania, who however, was denied Transylvania. Finally, all of Galicia was handed to the newly recreated Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth._

_However, the rest was kept together and reformed as the United Nations of Greater Austria, divided into separate nations. This was based on an old idea to reform Austria-Hungary into the "United States of Greater Austria". However, in contrast to the old proposal which proposed a myriad of federal states, the United Nations of Greater Austria is divided into nations (i.e. Different peoples, such as Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, etc.)._

_During the inter-war period, Austria was focused on rebuilding its shattered economy. Little care was given to the military. However, they still accepted Tesla's proposal of a "Teleforce Gun" in 1938, which he tried to market to multiple countries during that time. All turned him down except for Austria, his country of origin as he came from its croatian part._

_The Austrian military began a build-up in 1942 due to the increasingly aggressive policies of Germany. This was, however, a little too late._

_At the outbreak of war in 1944, the Austrian military was still not prepared to fight Germany. Though they did delay German forces, the Austrian defenders were outmatched when Germany brought its forces from recently conquered France up to Austria. The natural borders of Austria helped slow down German advance, allowing them to push back Italian and Romanian advances. The German army eventually broke through though and overran much of North-western Austria, including Austria proper, Tirol, Bohemia and Moravia._

_Roman armies helped stem the German tide in southern Hungary, Croatia and Slovenia following the Roman entry into the war and smashing of the Axis-aligned Yugoslavia. Allied forces managed to retake most of Hungary and Slovakia and crush Romania, but the battleline would remain between between the Transleithanian and Cisleithanian parts of Austria for most of the war._

_Following the de facto end of the Second World War in 1949 following the defeat and occupation of Germany and Italy, Austria again returned to peace after signing a separate peace treaty with the Soviet Union along with most of the Allies. Austria regained a lot of lost territory after the war from Italy. In addition to regaining South Tirol and the Austrian Littoral, they also acquired over half of the old area of the long-defunct state of Venetia which had been lost during the 19th century by the Habsburg Monarchy._

_Following the partition of Yugoslavia in 1950, Austria also regained the lost parts of Vojvodina and all of Bosnia-Hercegovina._

_Austria was one of the founding states of the Purple League, being one of two states involved in its creation since the start in 1951. The League was finalised and came into existence by the end of the Soviet War._


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Notes: **_Well, I don't have much to write here. I guess I could say that I appreciate criticism no matter how harsh (as long as it is criticism and not insults, that is) as I am always looking to improve my writing._

_And once again, thanks to NoMoreSanity for beta reading and helping with the fic._

**Disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect.**

**Claimer: I do own my Original Creations (OCs).**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 5: An Alarming Discovery<strong>

_"One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived" – Niccolo Machiavelli_

Dalia awoke with a start, she had had a most peculiar dream. The Shining Light had crashed on a rocky planet devoid of a breathable atmosphere. A group of aliens, clad in all-covering body suits with colour matching the barren environment of the uninhabitable planet, had assaulted them with energy weapons. The aliens had had a profile that was surprisingly similar to an asari, though some of them more than others. It was certainly a strange nightmare, but Dalia dismissed it as just another thought born of boredom.

She looked around the room that she was in. It was a sort of silver gray, like the corridors on the Shining Light, though it was darker and a bit duller in tone. Dalia felt a creeping sense of worry manifest itself in the back of her mind. Her quarters did not look like this. She got up from the small bed that she had been lying on and surveyed the room. It was windowless, not that large, and was all in all nearly devoid of anything. There was a table and a chair, both of which looked very familiar. The Shining Light had had the same kind. The bed looked like it actually came from her quarters.

The other features of the room was some sort of speaker, and a metallic door that did not stand out from the rest of the walls much. All in all, the room was definitely not her quarters on the Shining Light. It immediately dawned upon Dalia that her supposed nightmare had not been a fantasy, but had actually happened. There had actually been a violent first contact with another species. She did not want to think about the consequences of that. However, most alarming to her was why the Shining Light had been attacked. The motives behind that assault were completely unknown, and as it was a previously unknown alien species that had done it the motivations could be very strange or even totally alien. And the currently quite muddled state of her mind did not help her pondering.

Dalia paced about the room, thinking about her course of action. She had obviously been taken captive by the aliens for some reason. She did not know why, and she did not like standing around. She stopped, and checked her person. Her pistol was gone, as well as her omni-tool, but most of her other things was still there, and surprisingly there was something mounted onto one of her auditory organs. She did not know why, nor what its purpose was, but surmised that it was at least not damaging to her mental health. Regardless, she did not really have much on her, though it was more than nothing, and she still had her biotics. Dalia doubted that the aliens actually had any biotics of their own, considering how completely unprepared they had been when she had used her biotics against them.

That gave her an idea. Since the aliens had probably not encountered biotics, they would not have been able to take the necessary security precautions for containing a biotic. Dalia turned to look at the metallic door. It did not appear to be particularly thick. She surmised that a biotic warp would be capable of destroying it.

Dalia focused her biotic energy, causing a blue glow to surround her, and threw a biotic warp at the door. A hue of blue came upon it as it was torn up at a molecular level. However, most surprisingly was that it was not demolished. It stood fast. It showed evident damage, but it was still standing. Dalia assumed that it must have been built to stand against anything. These aliens were not stupid, it seemed.

Suddenly, a voice which was not entirely unlike asari ones spoke up, coming from her left. "Please, do not attempt to destroy that door. It will end badly for everybody involved."

Dalia turned around to her left to locate the origin of the voice. It came from the speaker mounted onto the ceiling. She was surprised at being capable of comprehending what it was saying, though immediately thereafter realised that the small device mounted onto her head was a translator of some sort.

"Please be patient, we have a busy schedule", said the voice. "Someone will be with you shortly to clear up any confusion which you might have. Please do not assault him. Thank you, and have a nice day."

Dalia walked back to and sat down on the bed. She did not want to exacerbate the situation, and did not want to anger the aliens in the eventuality that they were actually friendly and that the attack on the Shining Light had simply been the result of a severe misunderstanding. She felt her mind clear up from whatever had muddled her thoughts before, allowing her to think freely, as well as allowing her access to memories which she had previously been unaware of.

She recalled waking up in a white room, very much unlike the one that she now occupied as it had been larger. There had also been several strange humanoids in the room. She did not remember the exact details of them, but they had been humanoid. She had been startled by the strange turn of events, first assaulted by unknown aliens and then waking up in a room filled with similarly unknown aliens, and therefore had attempted to attack them. She had used her biotics to make several of them fly away, and had attempted to rise up from whatever she was lying on, before her vision had blackened once again.

Dalia wondered if that had been the reason for her confinement to such a heavily secured and armoured room. That it was simply a safety precaution. Time went by as she continued pondering, until her train of thought was derailed by a sound at the door. The sturdy metallic door slid open, revealing a humanoid standing in the doorway with some sort of tray. Dalia noticed that the alien had a body shape quite similar to batarians, and slightly similar to asari as well. However, the similarities to an asari were few, as the alien had a very masculine appearance.

The alien was clad in a black suit, which looked relatively light, though Dalia did not for a second doubt that the suit left its wearer totally exposed. This was reinforced by the holster attached to a band around the waist of the alien. She did take note of the fact that the holster was empty.

The face of the alien looked rather young, though there were parts of some strange black fur on it, most of which was located on top of the alien's head. The aliens had a friendly smile as he walked in and placed the tray on the sole table in the room.

The alien then turned to face Dalia and said, "Hey there, I suppose I should introduce myself. I'm Friedrich Wächter, nice to meet you".

The alien, Friedrich, extended a hand to Dalia. Confused, she said, "Uhm...I'm not familiar with your customs".

"Oh, right. Forgot that", said Friedrich, still keeping his cheery demeanour. "Well, you're supposed to shake it. It's a common way of greeting people".

Dalia took Friedrich's hand, and gave it a hearty shake. Friedrich seemed quite delighted that she had caught on that fast.

"Normally, one would introduce oneself as well, but I already know your name", said Friedrich. "Dalia Tekonya, right?"

"Uh, no. T'Conia"

"Ah, right", said Friedrich. "Now, I suppose you're filled to the brim with questions?"

Dalia did not know how to answer that, since despite understanding it, the translator did not seem like it translated idioms. At seeing her confusion, Friedrich said, "Oh right, idioms. Well, let me put it like this: I assume that you've got a lot of questions that you want to ask?"

"Yes", said Dalia. "Why am I in confinement?" While she did suspect that she had already figured out the reason behind it, she still wanted a straight answer for someone who knew for certain.

"Well, you have proved that you're a bit violent. That stunt you pulled against those doctors trying to pull you out of your coma didn't help things. Especially since we've got no idea what you pulled there".

That confirmed Dalia's suspicions that these aliens had no idea of what biotics are. However, one word in particular stood out from the rest. Coma.

A small frown formed on Dalia's face. "Wait what, coma?"

"Yeah, you were out of it there. You've been in coma for a little over a year. This is actually the first time that you've been fully awake".

"How?", said Dalia.

"I'm not really sure on the details, but I know it had something to do with the sleep darts we used on you".

Dalia did not say anything in response, simply sitting and contemplating what was just said.

"I know it's a lot to take in", said Friedrich. "I'll leave your food over there on the table and let you think". He made to exit the room, but stopped on the threshold and added, "Oh, and the food is for levo-amino species, so it is edible for you. We checked".

After that, Friedrich made his exit from the small room, leaving Dalia alone with the food tray. After some time, sensing her hunger, Dalia walked over to the food tray and took a bite of the food on it. It tasted surprisingly good.

The days passed by, with not much actually happening. She did not get much contact with any people, outside of Friedrich who appeared at mealtimes. He always seemed to retain his cheery demeanour, never being fazed by anything, and never unwilling to hold a casual conversation. However, Dalia was growing restless by the lack of information and activity. She had attempted to pry some information from Freidrich, but her questions were almost always deflected, either with humour or excuses. Many of the excuses sounded genuine, and Dalia was not inclined to believe that Friedrich was intentionally keeping information from her. He was simply following orders.

Nevertheless, Dalia did manage to acquire some information from him, mostly in regards to "humans" as the aliens called themselves. Apparently, "humanity" was far from united. Rather, it was divided amongst a great many different states. Dalia found this a bit strange, especially since tensions seemed to be running high. She surmised that that could be a very probable reason for the Shining Light being shot down.

Though she did not receive that much information which was considered to be of importance, Dalia still had more than enough to occupy her time pondering over it. Most of the time. She had had time to mostly get over the coma, but what worried her more were the fates of her fellow crewmembers. Nothing had been said about them, and that made her increasingly anxious.

The monotony was broken one day. Dalia did not know how many days had actually passed by, but it had to have been quite a few. She had only been awake for what seemed like a short while when the door opened up to reveal the by-now familiar face of Friedrich.

"Good morning", he said, with his usual smile plastered on. "Your days of boredom are now officially over. Sophia has arranged for you to meet her. Now, if you're wondering who Sophia is, well, you'll see I guess; but don't worry, she's a nice person. I know that for a fact".

Dalia inquired when she would be brought to see this "Sophia", to which Friedrich answered that that would be whenever Dalia felt for it. Since she did not have anything to do, Dalia asked to see "Sophia" immediately.

Friedrich nodded. "Alright, just follow me then". Dalia did so, and followed the guardsman out of her cell. This was actually the first time that she had been outside of it. The room which she entered into was squareish and not that large, with the same dark silvery gray colour on the walls. Right in front of the two of them was a large reinforced door made out of some kind of metal. The room was otherwise devoid of details except for a small console beside the door which lead into Dalia's cell, though she did also take notice that the floor looked like it was made up of individual plates.

Friedrich brought a hand to one of his "ears" as the human auditory organs were called, and said something in a language which did not translate. Suddenly, the large reinforced door came to life and parted to reveal a virtually identical room and door. After passing by that second room, they emerged into a rather long corridor which had a colour much lighter than the past rooms, and which had good lighting as well. There were also two soldiers standing at guard beside the door which they exited from. One of them gave her a friendly nod, while the other seemed wholly indifferent. The two guards carried what looked like the same sort of rifles that those who had attacked the Shining Light had used. They were clad in what looked like some very heavy armour.

They walked straight down the corridor, ignoring the adjoining one to their immediate right, instead continuing much farther down and taking a turn to the left. There were some personnel running about, but they were mostly patrolling guards. After some time, they arrived in front of a double door, which looked quite thin. There was a console on the wall to the right of the doors. Friedrich went up to it and pressed a few of the buttons there. He said something which did not translate, which was answered by another voice in the same language, then turned and gave Dalia a nod.

"Alright, you can go on in", he said. "Oh, and it's auto so you just have to walk up to it".

Dalia turned to the door and walked up to it. The doors automatically parted before her to reveal a large white chamber. She walked over the threshold, and the door closed behind her. The chamber was vast, and bright, owing not only due to the white colour of the walls but also the multiple lamps which illuminated it. It was also very empty, the only thing present being a light gray desk in the middle with two chairs on either side of it. On the chair behind the desk sat a person.

Dalia walked up to the desk, at which the person stood up and extended her hand. "Hello, I am Sophia Astyfýlakos. I am sure that both of us have a lot of questions", said the person.

Dalia could not help but notice how similar Sophia looked to an asari. Many of the differences could be easily covered up, in fact. However, this sense of familiarity served more to calm Dalia rather than to alarm and frighten her. She took Spohia's hand and shook it.

Sophia then sat down and said, "Please, sit down", gesturing at the empty chair. Dalia complied and sat down on it, noticing at that moment that the chair was wooden.

Sophia began it all by some perfunctory questions about Dalia, her work, occupation, and past, presenting a friendly attitude. Dalia felt much better now that she could properly talk to someone. After the initial inquiries, Sophia continued on with more important things, skipping some things in the process which she assured Dalia would be brought up later on.

"Now, onto more important matters. I assume that the most urgent inquiry which you have is about the fate of your fellow crewmembers", said Sophia with a questioning look on her face.

Dalia nodded. "Yes. I've wanted to know their fate for a time now".

"Okay, I suspected as much", said Sophia and sighed. "I must inform you of the fact that you should prepare yourselves for a horrible shock. The truth is quite uncomfortable".

Dalia said nothing, prompting Sophia to continue. "All of the turians in your crew are dead due to a severe allergic reaction". While this was a very uncomfortable piece of information, it made quite a lot of sense, though Dalia's reaction was still very visible.

"I am sorry for your loss", said Sophia. "Shall we stop here?"

"No, I need to know".

"Alright. The other asari on your crew, Scylla T'Mirtis, is unfortunately also deceased".

"What!" said Dalia. After having recovered from the initial shock, she held her head low. In her mind, she berated herself for the death of her friend. She felt a comforting hand on her shoulder and looked up to see Sophia.

"Do not blame yourself. It is not your fault. In fact, it could very well have been so that you had died as well. You were lucky. Scylla was, unfortunately, not. You laid in a coma for a little over a year, with a return to consciousness looking increasingly unlikely for you. The only matter here is random chance, not the fault of any one person". Dalia nodded, but said nothing as Sophia went back and sat down again.

A silence hung in the air. None of them saying anything. After some time, Dalia spoke up. "Why did she die?"

Sophia gave her a long look before sighing and saying, "Because of the same reasons that you were left in a coma for over a year. The sleep darts we used on you did not work as intended". She hung her head low and brought a hand up to her forehead. Sophia sighed, then looked back up at Dalia. "We did try to save her, and for a time it looked like we could but...it eventually came down to plain luck".

The silence resumed between them, hanging over them both like a heavy cloud, before being shattered by Sophia speaking up again.

"But I do bring good news as well. Your colleague Werder is alive. He has not fared tremendously but his biology coupled with our skilled doctors made it possible to save him".

At the questioning expression in Dalia's face, Sophia added, "Yes, you can go and visit him. I shall arrange for someone to guide you to his room. I will also request your transfer to a more comfortable room as well".

"Why?", said Dalia.

"Because you have proven yourself to not be a violent nor unstable person as we had fears of. If you were, you would probably have assaulted me over this. But I know now that you are a good and kind person and shall inform my superiors of that. You see, your current room was designed specifically for highly violent and dangerous individuals. You were an unknown variable. The only thing we knew about you was that you were an experienced fighter".

"How did you know that?"

"It was easy to figure out. You managed to hold your ground against an elite team of commandos. I say that speaks for itself, though you had the element of surprise with your biotics". Sophia gave her a warm smile before saying. "Now, there's a guard just outside this room. She will guide you to Werder's room, and probably inform you of the whereabouts of your new room".

Dalia nodded and rose up from her seat. Sophia stood up as well, and said, "It has been a very good occasion talking to you. We will meet again tomorrow, or, if you want time to cope with the unfortunate news which I had to lay onto you, then we can delay it for later".

"No, I think it is best if I come and talk to you more", said Dalia.

Sophia nodded, and gestured that it was time for Dalia to go. Dalia did so, walking back to the entrance of the chamber. The double doors parted to reveal a guard standing there and waiting for her. As the automatic doors slid shut behind her, the guard introduced herself as Leonie Schultze. From there on, Dalia followed Schultze to Werder's room.

They walked through the twisting maze of silvery corridors, before finally arriving in front of an inconspicuous door. Leonie gave her a nod, and stood off to the side, leaning on the wall. Dalia walked up and past the door and into a white room. It was filled with many different kinds of equipment, and there were various consoles and computers in places as well. There were also a few humans, dressed in long white garb. In the middle of the room was a strange sort of bed, with many different contraptions fixed to it. It was occupied by a familiar-looking salarian.

"Ah, Dalia. Good to see you. I was very worried when I heard you were in a coma", said Werder.

Dalia smiled, both at hearing and at seeing a familiar face.

* * *

><p>For Sophia, the next day was not particularly special nor enlightening. This time, Dalia was the one asking questions. She seemed to be taking the news of the demise of most of her crew surprisingly well. Though from what had been gleamed from the computers of the alien starship, Dalia had a background of serving in the military. It was most likely that she was surpressing some of it. However, the fact that Dalia was not all sunshine spoke clearly that she was still troubled.<p>

"How you can understand us?", said Sophia. "Well, we had a year on us to decipher everything on your ship and reappropriate it. After the first hurdle of trying to understand your Operating System, it was not that hard to simply reappropriate your translation software, integrating the definitions and idioms of your languages into our own. As you have probably noticed, we fitted you with one of our translators so that we can understand each other.

"As for your second question, we know so much about you because of this 'Codex' that was stored on your computers. After having attained dependable translators, it was not much of a difficulty to comprehend the information there".

"Okay", said Dalia. "May I ask why we were shot down?"

"That you may", said Sophia. "Your spacecraft violated national borders, and conducted suspicious activity. You see, tensions have been running high in human space for some time, and while the system which you were in was not officially off-limits, the fact that you specifically scanned around the location of one of our outposts. The existence of that secret outpost is classified. Your actions were very foolish when taking those factors into account, but you could never have known that, and the commander of that outposts should have known that you could not have known. In fact, for being such a loose cannon, he has been reprimanded and subsequently reassigned to a position which is more in line with his attitude. Hopefully, we shall not have to deal with similar incidents".

The rest of their session went on in a similar fashion. As the day came to an end and Dalia was returned to her room, Sophia could not help but feel a nagging sense of guilt over what she had said to Dalia both today and yesterday. The asari was overall a very kind person, and Sophia did not feel entirely comfortable with the knowledge that some of what she had said had been outright lies. While she was used to lying, it was an entirely different matter to do so to a nice person than to people of the same calibre that Sophia had talked to in the past in a similar manner. To put it lightly, those people who Sophia had in the past talked to had been very unpleasant.

Regardless, Sophia knew her job, and held fast to her mantra that the end will eventually justify the means, no matter how horrible.

* * *

><p>Some time had went by after the initial meeting with Sophia, and Dalia did take a liking to these sessions. She always learnt something from them, and they were a way for her to do something, though the new quarters that she had been assigned to had also had a lot of things that she could do. Still, Dalia was not exactly a reclusive person, and the fact remained that her room was almost always occupied by only herself. She had picked up some discussions about putting her and Werder in the same room to facilitate a better environment for recovery, since they could then talk to each other and possibly help the other cope with what had happened.<p>

Right now, Dalia was being escorted to the usual chamber where her sessions with Sophia had always been, ever since the first meeting. The one escorting her was Leonie Schultze, who was friendly, though quite reticent. They did sometimes exchange words whilst walking through the corridors, but their conversations tended to be short and terse.

The meeting that she was now being escorted was, according to Sophia, very important. Sophia had also said that there would be another person present as well. Dalia did not know what this all entailed, but from how Sophia worded it, she suspected that the new individual which was to be present was an important one. In what way, Dalia did not know, but she suspected that this second person was high-ranking.

The fact also remained that Sophia had yet to question her on the objectives and goals of their expedition. Alhough they could probably gleam that from the data banks of the Shining Light, the fact remained that Sophia had asked her questions about things which she should already have known. Dalia pondered the fact that the data banks might have been damaged, or that that information had been stored elsewhere.

Still, without letting someone who had the technical expertise necessary to look at that to investigate the data banks, it was not possible to find out. From Dalia knew, those with the required knowledge of the Shining Light that such a task would entail were all deceased. Therefore, it was quite useless to continue pondering that course of action and so Dalia dropped it.

The silvery double doors which lead into the large white chamber looked the same as always, automatically and adroitly slid open when Dalia approached them, just as any other day. However, instead of revealing the clean white chamber with its clear amd bright illumination, it revealed the same chamber, but shrouded in darkness. Though it was not so dark so that when the doors shut behind her that Dalia could not discern the two persons standing off the side of the middle.

Dalia walked up to them, noticing that one of them was Sophia. The other was a male, who she did not recognise. He was dressed in a brownish-gray uniform which was adorned with several markings and medals. On the right arm of the man was the symbol of the Roman military, an "X" imposed onto the letter "P". This was but one of the things that Dalia had found out from speaking to Friedrich. Overall, the man looked very much like an experienced military man.

"Hello again, Dalia", said Sophia. Gesturing towards the person to her right, Sophia said, "This is Pavlos Melas. He is the one who is over-all in charge of this whole facility complex".

Pavlos gave Dalia a nod, but did not say anything. Dalia returned the greeting and then turned to Sophia to ask, "Why is the room dark?"

"Because of this", was Sophia's answer, after which she seemed to tap a button on a pad in her hand which Dalia had up until now been oblivious of. The lighting became even darker, and a huge hologram was projected in the centre of the room. It provided illumination enough that Dalia could spot Sophia and Pavlos even in the total darkness of the room.

"A starmap", said Dalia.

"Indeed, and as you might have been wondering, this meeting is for the purposes of the objective of your expedition", said Sophia. "What we currently know is quite unsatisfactory".

Dalia nodded. "We were sent out into unknown space by the Council to explore and map-out that space and to investigate the other end of Relay 314. The mass relay which connects to Relay 314 is located in a very sparsely inhabitated system which is officially a part of the Turian Hierarchy. There are no habitable planets in that system, and the turians have been for some time pressing the Council to investigate its other end".

"Alright, and where exactly is this Relay 314 located here on the map?", said Sophia.

Dalia walked up to the starmap and looked at it, trying to find the location of the relay. It was not a galaxy map, so it was not as daunting of a task as she had initially feared. Still, she would need something to go from in order to localise the relay.

She turned around to Sophia and asked, "Where did we crash?"

Sophia walked up beside her and pointed out one of the many planets on the map. It had the label "Ares Prime" on it, along with readings of its atmosphere and similar things which were irrelevant to the task at hand, but was otherwise not very remarkable or noteworthy, in stark comparison to some of the other planets on the map.

Regardless, Dalia did know the map on the Shining Light that they had been following in order to find the next system. Now that she had something to go from, it did not take long before she found the system that Relay 314 was located in.

"Here", she said, pointing at the relevant system.

Sophia took a look, and Dalia could see her eyes widening slightly. Sophia and Pavlos exchanged knowing looks, though Dalia was certain that she could see a lot of worry in the eyes of both humans as well.

Pavlos nodded, and said, "Excuse me, but I have some matters which I am forced to attend. Meeting you was a pleasant experience, and I hope we meet again. Until then, good day". The higher-ranking man waved his hand in goodbye to both Dalia and Sophia and proceeded to walk towards the entrance. The doors slid open to admit his exit, and then shut behind him.

Dalia turned to Sophia and said, "Why did he leave?"

Sophia waited a few seconds before answering, but when she answered her voice was not entirely the calm and warm one that she used to have. It held a slight tinge of worry. "That system is home to an unfortified human colony called Shanxi".

* * *

><p>With brisk steps, Pavlos Melas walked down the silvery corridors. He was trying to keep calm outwardly, but was not rather successful. Most of those who used to see him did take notice that he was anything but calm, though they did not say anything of interrupt him as he was in a hurry. He walked with intent to one of the secured communications rooms in the facility.<p>

Pavlos brought up a hand to his ear, activating his com. unit and setting it to the right channel. A voice came in from the other end, asking him why he had called.

"I need a meeting with Khaldun, now. It is urgent", said Pavlos.

The voice on the other end assured Pavlos that it would let Khaldun know that.

As he walked through the gray corridors, Pavlos spent the time pondering. From what he had read from the "Codex" (taking into account that it is in all likelihood very biased), the turians were as a whole a very aggressive and militaristic species. In some ways, they reminded one of Ancient Rome, before the disasters that struck it later on and transformed it into the Roman Empire of today. Back then, they had been the undisputed greatest state in the whole known world, but most importantly: back then, they had had a policy of pre-emptive attacks and a very aggressive foreign policy. With new circumstances, so had the Roman policy changed, and it was today very much unlike the hyper-aggressive stance of the old.

If the likeness of the mindset of these turians to the old Roman doctrines were even a bit like what Pavlos suspected, it did not bode well at all. The fact that such a state as the Turian Hierarchy was on the border to human space did not make one at ease. Especially since it was such a vulnerable border as well.

Shanxi was lightly populated and almost totally undefended. It only had a token force to take care of any spacefaring criminals. Its undecided state was also most troublesome. No one had laid any official claims to the planet, but it was sure that China would do so due to the large amount of Chinese settlers. However, many other nations could also lay claim on the planet, including the Roman Empire, Austria, and Germany.

Nevertheless, something had to be done, and soon. If Shanxi would fall, then the turians would have an excellent springboard for taking on the rest of human space. Though the exact military strength of the turians was completely unknown, Pavlos was sure that they had not earned the title of being the strongest military power in Citadel Space for nothing.

Pavlos turned around a corner, and walked down a corridor which ended in a dead en. He stopped in front of the door which decorated the wall at the end of the corridor. The door itself looked like any other of the doors in the facility. However, those who were attentive would notice a small security camera up in the roof, to the right of the door, constantly scanning those who approached. Another small detail was the fact that it did not open automatically. Instead, Pavlos had to type in some things on a console, as well as show his identification card.

After having done so, the door slid open to admit Pavlos entrance into a black corridor which ended in another door. As Pavlos entered the corridor on the other side, the door slammed shut and locked behind him. The corridor which he was now walking down through was quite unusual in its construction, being more like a hexagon than a rectangle and with its walls being clearly made up of individual plates. Pavlos knew what hid under many of those black plates of metal, namely automated defence systems of various kinds. Such things were common in many Roman facilities, especially in important ones such as this. In fact, they were scattered throughout the whole facility in the regular corridors. A good example being the containment cell that the alien called "Dalia" had been initially confined to. The way leading out of there was an absolute minefields of close-ranged auto-turrets, armed with weaponry such as Epyon Plasma Incinerators (courtesy of the Germans) and Impaler Autoguns. Going up against the kind of auto-turrets that are used in important Roman facilities is never fun, something which Pavlos learned during training.

Exiting the black corridor, Pavlos entered into a lit room, which except for the various consoles strewn about it was just an empty and dark circle. He walked up to the console in the middle and typed in a few commands. After a moment, a holographic image appeared around three metres in front of the console. It was a man, who looked weary and experienced. He had a large gash on one of his cheeks, and graying hair and moustache. He wore a similar sort of uniform that Pavlos wore, though it was darker and did not look like it had been used out in the field that much. This was Khaldun ibn Haroun al-Justinia, the chief of the covert arm of the Roman Military.

"What is it, Melas?", said the man.

"Well, Sir, we have uncovered some unsettling facts from our alien guest", said Pavlos. "Apparently, the Shanxi System is right on the border with the Turian Hierarchy, and...you have read their 'Codex', right?"

Khaldun nodded. "I have, continue".

"Right, well, the mission of the aliens which we have here in our facility was to discover what lay on the other side of the relay which is connected to the Shanxi Relay. With what we know of these turians, I would say that we should seize and fortify Shanxi. We cannot leave such a vital and strategically important location exposed just like that. It would be a disaster in the event of a war, which I think is very likely, given what we know of the Turian Hierarchy".

Khaldun seemed to contemplate what Pavlos had said for a time before nodding and saying, "The Emperor has ordered the annual meeting of the heads of the military to convene later this month. I shall take it up there. However, I doubt that the course of action chosen will be that of seizing Shanxi. My thought, and what I shall be suggesting, is that we should encourage Romans to settle on Shanxi, as well as move soldiers there to defend and increase Roman population. Simply seizing it will not lead to anything good in the current situation. Khaldun out".

Khaldun turned around and walked away, his hologram dissolving and disappearing as he did so.

* * *

><p><em>Codex: History of the Western European Union: The Western European Union is a loose alliance of states originating from the western part of the continent of Europe comprised of the states: France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Italy and the former colonies of these countries. It is not an actual Union or state by itself. Rather, it is a forum for cooperation for all of the states which it represents in the human bloc politics. During its early years, when humanity were still only settled on Earth, it was an economically and militarily powerful organisation despite its much smaller area in comparison to the other blocs.<em>

_The Western European Union was formed during the slightly confused period between the end of the Second World War and the end of the Soviet War. It emerged when the world had settled down after the end of the Soviet War in 1956 along with most of the other current political blocs. Each member of the Western European Union is sovereign, much like the member states of the Purple League. However, the Western European Union is not quite as loose of an organisation as the Purple League is. Its member states have a fully integrated economy and cooperates very closely in other areas as well._


End file.
